


Hostages to Fortune

by Elspethdixon, Seanchai



Series: Resurrection-verse [3]
Category: Marvel 616
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-05-17
Updated: 2008-06-08
Packaged: 2017-12-15 23:07:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 46,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/855031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elspethdixon/pseuds/Elspethdixon, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seanchai/pseuds/Seanchai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The sequel to Readjustment. Things are finally settling down, and the Avengers are settling in. It's time for disaster to strike again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Our thanks to Tavella for the great beta job.

  
  
Tony's punch glanced off Steve's shoulder as Steve twisted his upper body back out of the way, and then Steve grabbed him by the arm and swept his foot around to knock Tony's legs out from under him.  
  
Tony hit the mat hard enough to knock the breath out of his lungs. Then he simply lay there for a moment, staring up at the ceiling and gasping in air. The workout room in the Avengers Tower had high, white, very basic ceilings, nothing like the decorative plasterwork the Mansion had had.  
  
"You're pulling your punches," Steve informed him. He crouched down beside Tony, hands resting loosely on his knees. "I shouldn't be able to do that so easily."  
  
"I am not pulling my punches." Tony pushed himself up onto his elbows, glaring at Steve, who was looking down at him with an air of exasperated superiority.  
  
"You're pulling your punches," Steve returned. "I can always tell when you are."  
  
Not only had Tony not pulled that punch, he hadn't pulled  _any_  of the blows Steve had been shrugging off throughout this sparring session. It was possible that he was a little rusty, thanks to spending the past month letting his cracked ribs heal, but he was giving it everything he had, even though part of him winced every time he threw a punch at Steve. "Force equals mass times acceleration, and you have about forty pounds more mass than I do."  
  
Steve raised his eyebrows. "Your point?"  
  
"I have to hit you harder to knock you down than you have to in order to knock me down. It's basic physics."  
  
Steve shook his head, smiling, and sat down on the mat beside Tony. "Would it help if I brought you coffee?" he asked.  
  
"Maybe," Tony said, offering Steve a smile of his own. Yes, coffee would be good. "I should take a shower first, though. I have to leave in an hour." The process of dismantling the SHRA and revamping the Initiative had not gone as smoothly as they might have hoped; the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security had dragged their heels every step of the way, and Henry Gyrich had requested that Tony come to DC to light a fire under those officials who were reluctant to give up the notion of a government-controlled superhuman army.  
  
At least the deploying of teenagers into combat situations had stopped; Gyrich and Rhodey's team had seen to that. Gyrich could sense which way the political winds were blowing, and he'd always known how to follow political trends.  
  
"Can't you be a little late?" Steve asked, taking Tony by the wrist and pulling him up into a sitting position. He kept hold of Tony’s wrist for a moment longer, squeezing it lightly. "A quinjet can get you to DC in twenty minutes."  
  
"And I have a nine o' clock meeting with Jack Kooning in an hour and a half."  
  
Steve frowned. "I can't believe he's still pushing to keep the government-created superhero project. You'd think at this point he have given up on it."  
  
"He tried to recruit Maya to investigate using Extremis to create super soldiers. Since it has a ninety percent fatality rate and has caused insanity in fifty percent of surviving test subjects, I made her tell him no." Actually, he'd begged her. It had been during those dark, empty weeks when Steve had been gone, and Kooning had wanted to use an Extremis-enhanced super soldier to replace him.  
  
"Please tell me you didn't know about the ninety percent fatality rate when you shot yourself up with it."  
  
"Okay," Tony said. "I won't." It wasn't as if he'd had much of a choice, but Steve was stubbornly clinging to his dislike of the Extremis. "I'll be gone for three days," he added. "Don't let Clint destroy the tower." He didn't mention that it would be the longest span of time they would be apart since Steve had come back. He wasn't that pathetic.  
  
"I'd worry more about Hank destroying your lab." Steve grinned at him, then reached out and placed his free hand on the side of Tony's face, regarding him silently for a moment. "The cat will miss you," he said finally. "You're the one he likes best."  
  
Tony turned his face into Steve's hand, closing his eyes. He wasn't looking forward to three nights spent alone. "I don't know why it keeps getting up on our bed," he said. "It's supposed to be Jarvis's." The cat probably kept jumping up onto the bed because Tony had invited it up there, one night during the SHRA hearings when Steve had been far away in Washington and Tony had been unable to sleep. However, there was no way he was going to admit that, particularly not to Steve, who seemed to be involved in some endless, petty war with the cat, which had begun sleeping in his shield and gnawing on its leather straps.  
  
"I'll miss you, too." Tony's eyes were still closed, but he could hear the smile in Steve's voice. Steve leaned in and kissed him briefly, then pulled back, adding, "When you get back, we'll do this again, and I'll expect an actual challenge."  
  
  


***

  
  
  
Monitor duty had never been Hank's favorite part of being an Avenger, but since he was off the active duty list for the foreseeable future (or at least, until he could find a way to balance chemicals in the bloodstream while shrinking, which was theoretically possible but not something he was entirely prepared to risk death-by-mood-stabilizer-overdose to test), he'd decided that there was no time like the present to get used to it, and had volunteered to handle communications while Tony was out of town.  
  
It wasn't difficult work, by any means. It was just, as a rule, deeply boring. On the other hand, boring meant that nobody in New York was trying to blow anything up, which was always a plus.  
  
And it was better than being grilled by the government and the media. Thank God they'd only needed Tony this time; Hank had made more than enough public, detailed confessions of all his sins for one lifetime. Trials, Avengers' court-martials, congressional hearings -- they were all the same, really, exercises in trying to justify yourself to groups of people who were all silently judging you.  
  
The phone rang shrilly, and Hank steeled himself before picking it up -- there had been three calls this morning from various Daily Bugle reporters, all wanting an exclusive interview with the Avengers, all of which he'd turned down, since Steve refused to talk to any Bugle reporter other than Ben Urich.  
  
"Avengers Tower," he said, already preparing for round four of the "no, we will not be giving any interviews until all of the libel suits have been settled," argument.  
  
"Pym, I cannot believe you left me alone with the teenagers to play secretary." James Rhodes' voice was sharp and clear, but with the faint electronic hum in the background that meant he was using the War Machine armor's headset and mike rather than a telephone.  
  
"I'm not playing secretary," Hank said, not at all defensively. "I'm monitoring communications."  
  
"Fine. You're not playing secretary. Look, that's not why I called. Don't think I'm happy about it, but it's not why I called. I'm in New York for the next couple of days, trying to call in favors and draft somebody to be your replacement, and I wanted to give you guys a heads-up in case you needed back up for anything while I'm in town."  
  
"That's good to hear," Hank told him. "With Tony in DC, we've got no firepower." They were going to have to do something about that eventually. They currently had two hand-to-hand specialists (Sam could fly, but he was a hand-to-hand fighter when you got right down to it), one archer, and Jan, whose stingers were effective, but who still wasn't really a powerhouse. Until Jan could master her new growing powers, Tony was their only big gun.  
  
None of them had invulnerability or super-strength, either, which hadn't been an issue yet, but had the potential to be.  
  
"Better Tony than me. I get enough anti-superhero shit on a daily basis as it is."  
  
"Ah." Hank said. "I guess the protestors haven't gone home, then?" During his month-long stint at Camp Hammond, the angry men and women with "mutie go home" signs had been a semi-permanent fixture outside the base's front gate.  
  
Rhodes snorted. "What do you think? Anyway, you have any idea who I can blackmail into replacing you? I mean, I know you're trying to fix things with your ex, but come on, you're leaving me in the lurch here."  
  
Yes, he was, and he even felt guilty about it, if only slightly, but, "I had to get out. I had to." It was more than the opportunity to be an Avenger again, more than a second, well, fourth, shot at things with Jan. "It was only a matter of time before Gyrich and Dr. Blitzschlag would have had me cloning a superhero army for them, and I really don't want to become the government's better-looking answer to Armin Zola." Blitzschlag had made Hank's skin crawl, with his wild-eyed glee over the prospect of working with the man who'd created Ultron and cloned (so horribly unsuccessfully) a god. He'd been disturbingly comfortable with the idea of using people as government science experiments, and Hank strongly suspected that he was a former Nazi.  
  
"Everything's changed since Tony and Reed and the rest of you blew the lid off everything. Blitzschlag is out, and there's an oversight committee looking into Van Patrick's death. I think his family is going to sue."  
  
They'd have to get in a very long line first. Hank resisted the temptation to point out that that wasn't exactly an incentive to come back, letting Rhodes continue uninterrupted.  
  
"Look, I'm desperate here. I spend half the day reminding Gauntlet that he's not allowed to call seventeen-year-olds pussies, and that Vance is going to telekinetically throw him through a wall if he calls the New Warriors baby-killers one more time, and the other half explaining to everyone who will listen why one horrific training accident shouldn't be allowed to shut down the program."  
  
"At least you don't have to keep it classified anymore." Making the students cover up the death of one of their classmates had been one more thing Hank had hated having to do.  
  
"Yeah, thanks for that, by the way." Rhodes' voice was not quite sarcastic, but only by a small margin. "You did hear the part where I said they're suing us?"  
  
"I wish Scott Lang were still around. He would have been great at this." It wasn't just that Scott had been a father himself; he'd been legitimately good with children, and had had an enviable ability to put complex concepts into simple terms without sounding as if he was talking down to people. Hank himself had never quite mastered that. "You could try calling Ben Grimm for advice," he suggested. "He's got experience with kids. I'd suggest the X-Men, but most of them won't touch the Initiative with a ten foot pole." He'd had to promise to run a battery of DNA tests on active and deactivated X-genes in order to get Hank McCoy to bring in an empath and set up extra training for Trauma, when the trainee's fear-projection powers had gotten out of control. "Scott Summers might be willing to give you a lesson plan, but that's about the best you'll get."  
  
"Yeah, I'll think about it," Rhodes said, in a tone of voice that implied that he had already dismissed the idea.  
  
"Or you could try convincing some younger heroes to join you. I know Firestar hung up her cape, but she might be willing to help out now, especially since we've already got Vance on the project." Unless Vance's presence would be more of a deterrent, given that he and Angela had broken off their engagement ages ago. That didn't change the fact that Firestar would be good at teaching; she had always been level headed, and her struggles with her own powers would give her a good perspective on what some of the Initiative's new recruits were going through.  
  
"Vance wanted to try and bring in Silverclaw, but Gyrich wants someone more experienced for your replacement. I'll think about Firestar, though. I guess what I really want is someone else with the same kind of perspective that you and I've got."  
  
"Unfortunately, I think most of the people with our level of experience already have commitments." There were more and more superheroes becoming free agents again, now that the Initiative was no longer mandatory, but people who had already opted out of it weren't likely to want to get involved with it once more.  
  
"I don't mean that kind of experience. You, me, hell, even Vance, we've all screwed up. We know having powers is a dangerous responsibility that you can't take for granted, but we also know making a mistake isn't the end of the world."  
  
The kids who had seen Michael Van Patrick accidentally killed at the hands of one of his own classmates probably grasped that superpowers were dangerous. They were probably less than convinced that disastrous mistakes with them weren't the end of the world. Hank wasn't entirely sure of that himself.  
  
Real screw-ups followed you around for the rest of your life.  
  
"You got into a fistfight with a friend," Hank pointed out. "I created Ultron."  
  
"It was a little too one-sided to call it a fistfight," Rhodes admitted, sounding chagrined. "Ultron was an accident. I meant to knock the hell out of Tony. He was just trying to stop me from being an idiot, and when  _Tony_  has to stop  _me_  from being an idiot, well, that's a wake up call all on its own. And speaking of Tony, tell him he better not steal any more of my teammates."  
  
"You could tell him yourself."  
  
"I will, next time I see him. Figures he'd go out of town right when I show up for a visit."  
  
"I don't think he wanted to go." That was an understatement, actually. Tony had begun to wear a distinctly hunted look any time anyone connected with the government contacted them. He was handling all of it, and better than Hank would have, but nobody bounced back quickly from the kind of burnout Tony had been headed for after Doom and company attacked. Even a week later, when the hearings in DC had started, there had still been circles under his eyes.  
  
"He'll be back tomorrow, anyway," Hank went on. And thank God for it. If Hank had privately thought that Steve sulked like a twelve-year-old any time Tony was gone  _before_ , it was only because he hadn't seen the way Steve was sulking now. If he'd been away another few days, things would probably have devolved to the point where Steve started picking fights with Clint to blow off steam, and Clint didn't need the encouragement.  
  
"Great. I'll call back tomorrow."  
  
"And I'll call you if we need the backup."  
  
There was a click as the line went dead, Rhodes hanging up, and Hank went back to staring at the monitor screen and mentally calculating the drop in body weight produced by a shift from five-foot-ten to two inches, and what percentage of an average-sized dose of any given medication would have to be shifted out of one's body in the process in order to avoid toxicity.  
  
  


***

  
  
  
"You have no idea how silly I feel flying on a commercial airline," Carol said, as she snatched her final bag from the luggage carousel. She was wearing jeans and a tight black t-shirt, stuff that wouldn't be wrinkled or otherwise ruined by sitting on a plane for hours, and her long, blonde hair was pulled back in a ponytail.  
  
"Why did you, then?" Clint shouldered her other bag and elaborated, "They don't even let you take toothpaste anymore."  
  
"Or mascara." Carol shook her head, and said, "But it's more trouble than it's worth to try and take a general aviation aircraft into New York these days. I could just fly in under my own power, but," she hefted the suitcase she was holding, "it would just look silly flying through the sky toting Samsonite. Plus, I’d be screwed if I dropped it."  
  
Clint had been to LaGuardia airport dozens of times, and it never got any less crowded. It wasn't that hard to get through the crowd, though, as long as you didn't mind shoving past people.  
  
"I can't believe you're actually meeting with a publicist," Clint snorted, as they reached the exit into the main concourse, where there were three times as many people as there had been in baggage claim. "You've been in LA too long."  
  
"You lived in LA for three years," Carol said. "Or was it five?"  
  
"Yeah, but I never had a publicist."  
  
"How else was I supposed to promote my book?" Carol edged around a trio of businessmen who were standing smack in the middle of the path to the main door, talking loudly to one another.  
  
"So you really are writing a sequel?" Clint asked.  
  
"Yep. In this one, the star pirates have to stop a time-traveling warlord from taking over their solar system."  
  
If the first book had been based on Carol's time with the Starjammers... "Let me guess," Clint stepped in front of Carol and swung the door open with his free hand, "the evil warlord has an even more evil son who's gonna get his."  
  
Carol shrugged. "Oh, he doesn't die. He just loses both legs in an unfortunate teleporter accident."  
  
"You're sure he doesn't get turned inside out?" If it happened in zero gravity, Marcus's insides could float all around the spaceship.  
  
"This isn't a comedy. I'm not writing Galaxy Quest, Clint."  
  
"Well, It's good that you're here," Clint told her, dropping the topic of the book before they actually had to talk about Marcus and Kang. "We are one seriously underpowered set of Avengers. As awesome as I am, I can't punch somebody through a wall." Too bad Jen was also staying in LA; having She-Hulk on their side would be damn useful. Clint could remember a time when everyone was always complaining that all the superheroes were in New York; these days, it seemed like people were everywhere  _but_  New York.  
  
Carol smiled, and shifted her suitcase up onto her shoulder. "Tell me you brought a car, and we're not taking public transport back to the city."  
  
"I came from Stark Tower. Of course I brought a car." Clint pulled the keys out of his pocket and flourished them. "Red BMW convertible. You should see Tony's garage. It's like a Bond movie."  
  
"BMW?"  
  
"Cap wouldn't let me take the Ferrari." Because he was still inwardly convinced that Clint was nineteen, and would crash it into a building or something. The only time Clint had ever wrecked a car, it had been entirely Jen's doing. Cap, on the other hand, had been responsible for the destruction of no less than half a dozen of SHIELD's flying cars, and his Harley had been rebuilt twice.  
  
The BMW wasn't as sexy as a Ferrari, but it still accelerated like a race-car. Carol insisted on driving, which Clint didn't blame her for; anyone would jump at the chance to drive a bright red European convertible, even in New York traffic.  
  
"So," Carol said awkwardly, after they had crossed into Manhattan and Clint had finished teasing her for writing a book that was basically about a thinly veiled version of herself, "how's Tony doing?"  
  
Clint blinked, and turned to look at her. "You've talked to him on the phone, haven't you? Why are you asking me?"  
  
Carol snorted. "You know how Tony is. Asking him would be a waste of time, since he'd never actually say anything if something was wrong. And I can’t very well ask Steve."  
  
"Why not?" Clint returned his eyes to the street ahead of them, just in time to catch the sign marking the next turn. "You go left here," he added. These days, if you wanted to know something about Tony, Steve was probably the best person to ask.  
  
"So, Captain America, how's your boyfriend doing? He was a total wreck the whole time you were dead, and I was wondering if he'd gotten over that yet?"  
  
"Right." Clint said. "I see what you mean. I don't know, he seems fine to me." He shook his head. "It's still weird hearing people talk about that. I only saw it on TV. It feels kind of like it never really happened, but then someone will say something, or not say something, and it's like they're all having this secret conversation that doesn't include me."  
  
"Just ride it out. Eventually enough stuff will have happened that we'll all have different things to glare at each other over and avoid talking about, and then you'll feel right at home again."  
  
That was mockery, wasn't it? They were all far too casual about coming back from the dead, Clint reflected. He had died, and then been brought back... somehow. He still wasn't sure exactly what Wanda had done, but since it had resulted in Clint Barton still walking around breathing air, he wasn't complaining.  
  
Only, she had never told him why, and dying and coming back, getting a second chance... it ought to mean something, right? He hadn't had much time to think about it before, with everything going to hell, and then seeing Cap on the news, alive once more, and then all the reunions in DC, but he had time now, and the more he thought about it, the less sense it made. Why had Wanda chosen to bring him back, and not Vision, or her kids, or anyone else? She'd brought Simon back because they were in love, and had had that link thing going on. Cap coming back had this feeling of rightness to it; he deserved it, and people needed him, and it wasn't as if Clint thought he didn't deserve his own second shot at life (because he certainly hadn't deserved to die), but he wasn't Captain America. He didn't have people who needed him.  
  
Clint wasn't the kind of guy who sat around pondering the meaning of his own existence, but it was starting to bug him.  
  
But nobody else seemed to wonder about why he had come back, or even how. They'd just accepted it.  
  
"It won't really feel like home until we're back in the Avengers Mansion," he said. Not that Tony's penthouse wasn't nice, but it wasn't home.  
  
Carol turned a corner so sharply that Clint had to brace himself to keep from being thrown into the door. "I love this steering system. You know, I never got the whole story on what happened with you. Jut that it had something to do with Wanda. I don't blame you for staying out of the whole Registration mess, but you could have dropped us a message to let us know you were alive."  
  
"Sorry about that." And now it was Clint's turn to be awkward. "I was pretty confused those first couple of months back. The only part I really remember was trying to hunt down the Witch, to see if I could get her to tell me what she'd done. Why she killed me. Why she brought me back."  
  
"I guess you never found her." Carol's voice was suddenly flat. "Or she'd be in the Raft or the Negative Zone right now."  
  
"I...” Clint looked down at his hands, picking at the edge of one of the calluses on his palm. "She had amnesia. She didn't remember me, didn't even remember who she was."  
  
"And you  _left her there?"_  Carol's voice rose half an octave. "That's great. What happens if she gets angry and decides to say 'no more people?' She's too powerful to leave out there now that she's a crazy sociopath."  
  
"I don't think she even knows she has powers anymore," Clint protested. It sounded like the lame excuse it was, since Omega-level mutants who didn't know how to use their powers were probably more even dangerous than Omega level mutants who did.  
  
He couldn't remember why he hadn't brought her in. He couldn't even remember leaving. He barely remembered anything after he'd arrived on in that little town, except for... the sex. He remembered that part.  
  
He'd gone there intending to force answers out of Wanda, to bring her back to justice, and then he'd left empty-handed, after sleeping with her. He'd tried not to examine the memories too closely, because he wasn't sure he wanted to remember the reasoning behind that.  
  
He wouldn't have blackmailed Wanda into having sex with him in exchange for letting her go, would he?  
  
Even if he hadn't... she'd had amnesia, had no idea who he was, no knowledge of their shared past. There had been a million and one reasons why sleeping with her had been a bad idea, and Clint had known all of them, and Wanda hadn't. And that felt uncomfortably like taking advantage of her.  
  
Worse, he couldn't remember  _why_  he'd slept with her.  
  
"What the hell were you thinking, Hawkeye? She's powerful enough to reshape the world, and she's crazy. And she hates us!"  
  
"I don't remember what I was thinking," Clint admitted, still picking at the callus. Even with gloves, archery toughened your hands up. "Hell, I don't even remember where I found her."  
  
There was a moment of silence, and then Clint said, softly, "I don't really remember most of what I was doing."  
  
Carol sighed. "I know coming back to life like that is confusing-"  
  
"No," Clint interrupted. "It wasn't that." He hadn't been able to bring himself to mention any of this to Cap, because he knew exactly how disappointed in him Steve would be, and he couldn't talk about it with Jan, because, well, he just couldn't. And he'd be damned if he'd admit any of it to Hank, after the way he'd gone after him for hitting Jan. There was Sam, but he treated Clint like he was Cap's stupid younger brother half the time. And Clint had only decided a week ago that he wasn't going to hold Tony's recent lapse into Big Brother is Watching insanity and inexplicable ability to turn Cap gay against him anymore. Mostly because the Big Brother thing had really been the government's fault, and, when he really thought about it, Cap had always been kind of gay.  
  
Carol had lost memories before, and had done things she was less than proud of. And she was kind of like a guy, which somehow made the idea of talking about this less intimidating.  
  
"I was so angry at her," he said, trying to explain, but not sure he could, since he didn’t really understand it himself. "For what she did to us, for what she did to me. I wanted her to explain. She must have gone crazy; she couldn't have done all of that if she wasn't crazy. I thought maybe I could... I don't know. Somebody needed to help her."  
  
"No," Carol snapped, glaring at the cars ahead of them. "Somebody needed to stop her. She's a menace. Look what she did to us, to Scott, to Vision, to her own brother. You don't come back from that kind of crazy. That's supervillain crazy"  
  
"Two months ago, that's what we all thought about Tony," Clint pointed out. You didn't just write your friends off, not if there was still a chance that there was anything left of them. "We've gone crazy or gone to the dark side before, some of us. Hank got so bad he had to be kicked off the team, and he ended up in jail." If Hank could fix things enough that Jan could forgive him, then there had to be something Clint could do to make up for this. There had to be. If he'd actually done anything. "Natasha started out working for the bad guys. There's that time Rhodey flipped out and had to be taken down by Tony. And, hell, there's you and Tony, with the drinking, both of you came back from that."   
  
Carol stared fixedly at the back of the Lexus SUV in front of them, not looking at him. "What time with Rhodey? I've never heard about that."  
  
"That's the only other time I was ever mad at the Witch." Clint shrugged slightly. "I don't know the whole story, she didn’t tell me until after everything was over. Apparently there was a while there, right after Tony stopped drinking, when Rhodey was having some kind of issues. Wanda saw him haul off and slug Tony once."  
  
"So," Carol said. "Who hasn't wanted to do that occasionally? I threw him through the wing of an airliner once."  
  
"Yeah, but since he's still alive, I'm guessing he was in the armor. That time he wasn't, and Rhodey was. And then he went on some kind of rampage, and Tony had to put on some suit of armor he'd made out of scrap metal in our lab and chase him down. But he's been great for years, and Hank's mostly sane now, so maybe-"  
  
"Why have I never heard about this?" She sighed, shaking her head. "Did you do anything about it? Does anyone other than you, Wanda, and Tony even know?"  
  
"By the time I found out, the whole thing was over," Clint said, feeling thoroughly on the defensive now. "That's why I was mad, because Wanda didn't tell me about it until it was too late to do anything."   
  
"But did you tell anyone?" she pressed. "When people like us lose it, it's a big deal. You have to tell someone. The more people who know, the better the chance that if it happens again, somebody will step in before anyone gets hurt. If nothing else, you should have told Steve. If any of us had known about Wanda..."   
  
"I slept with her. With Wanda," Clint blurted out. "And then I let her go."  
  
"Okay, that--" she broke off, eyes widening. "You what?"  
  
"It's funny. I meant to bring her back, and then I found her, and we had sex, and then I was on a plane headed back here. I was in the Heathrow airport when I saw the press conference you all held after you took down the Mandarin and Red Skull." He shrugged, scrubbing a hand through his hair. "I think maybe I took advantage of her somehow, like maybe we made some kind of trade." And what a way to prove himself worthy of that second shot at life; he hadn't deserved to die, but men who took advantage of women were scum.  
  
Carol's hand tightened on the wheel. "You  _think_  you made some kind of trade? How can you  _think_  she let you fuck her in return for not bringing her it to face justice? You either did or you didn't."  
  
Clint shrugged, desperately uncomfortable. "I don't know if I did. I don't remember. I don't remember deciding to do it, or deciding to come back. I don't even remember the sex all that well. It's kind of a blur."  
  
"What do you mean, you don't remember? Were you drinking?"  
  
Things would have made more sense if he had been, but there had been no alcohol involved. "No." Clint shook his head. "I just don't remember. The whole thing's kind of like a dream, like it happened to somebody else."  
  
Carol frowned. "That almost sounds like mind-control, but even if she was faking the amnesia, Wanda's powers never worked like that." She hesitated, then shook her head. "Of course, she can manipulate reality on a global scale now, so God knows what she can and can't do."  
  
"It can't be mind control," Clint protested. He wished it were. It would be an awfully convenient explanation for the memory loss, and it would mean that it wasn't his fault. "She didn't even know she had powers."  
  
"Clint, does any of this sound like something you would do?"  
  
He didn't want to think so, but... "I almost ended up working for the Russians just because Natasha slept with me."  
  
Carol's lips twitched. "You were nineteen. Would you be that stupid now?"  
  
"Well, no, but-"  
  
"Just because she doesn't remember that she has powers doesn't mean she isn't using them unconsciously. People don't just lose all their memories, not in real life, not unless there's something they need to forget. Maybe she recognized you on some level, and because she didn't want to remember, she just, I don't know, made you go away."  
  
"After sexing me up."  
  
"Maybe she was lonely. Maybe some part of her wanted to reconnect with her past. Maybe she just wasn't done screwing with you, literally."  
  
Maybe she had put some kind of whammy on him. As he'd said to Carol, the whole thing was like trying to remember a dream. Several weeks worth of his life were just gone.  
  
"Honestly?" Carol said softly, "Normally, if a guy told me something like this, I'd call him a prick and kick him out of the car, but what you just described sounds an awful lot like what happened with Marcus." She grimaced. "I can't remember why I decided to go with him, I just know that I didn't really want to. Like one of those dreams where you don't want to do something, but you're watching yourself do it anyway."  
  
It hadn't been like that, for Clint. Not exactly. There hadn't been any disgust or fear; he'd always thought that Wanda was attractive, always liked her. It was why her betrayal had hurt so badly. Mostly, there had just been a feeling of confusion over why he was there, why he was doing what he was doing. Like Carol said, it had been like watching himself from a distance, while someone else controlled his body.  
  
"That's... it was a little like that, yeah."  
  
Carol made a little half-laughing sound, either disgusted or amused or both. Clint couldn't tell which. "Then I can promise you, you didn't take advantage of her. If she put the whammy on you, even subconsciously, then she must have wanted it."  
  
"Oh." He wasn't sure if that made things better, or much, much worse.  
  



	2. Chapter 2

  
The Meridian was located on the top floor of a very expensive downtown hotel, and was noted as much for the view from its large picture windows as it was for its food. It was only a three star restaurant, however. Jan had a feeling Tony had decided that a reporter from the Sun wasn't worth the expense of going somewhere with a fourth star.  
  
Tony's flight had been late getting in, and Jan had been worried that she would be left to deal with Byrne, the reporter, by herself. That, or be reduced to begging either Sam or Carol to come with her. Steve was still refusing to talk to reporters, and she had learned by dint of long and unfortunate experience that the farther Hank and Clint were kept from the press, the better it was for all concerned.  
  
Luckily for Carol and Sam, Tony had gotten to back to the Tower just in time to drop off his bags, change into a suit that wasn't wrinkled, and dash out the door for the Meridian. They had made it with seconds to spare, only to find that Byrne was apparently running late.  
  
"And then after I was finished with Kooning, or rather, when Kooning was finished with me, I had to meet with Gyrich, and then with what I think may have been half the Pentagon, plus the Department of Homeland Security." Tony groaned, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. "And Gyrich was actually the high point. I thought I'd never escape. I can't believe I actually volunteered to be Secretary of Defense once. I must have been insane."  
  
"No argument there," Jan said. "I try to stay as far away from politicians as possible."  
  
"I just feel bad," Tony went on. "I told Steve I'd be back this morning."  
  
"I don't think he'll hold it against you." Steve hadn't quite started sulking when the projected arrival time had gone by without Tony putting in an appearance, but that was probably because he and Clint had been busy arguing over something. Jan hadn't bothered to pay attention to what, because it had been incredibly petty, and only the two of them had actually cared about it.  
  
Tony's suit was perfectly pressed, and his hair was neat, mainly because Jan had whacked his hand down whenever he'd tried to reach up and mess with it, but there were circles under his eyes again.  
  
"You look tired. Are you all right?"  
  
Tony frowned. "Why do people keep asking me that?"  
  
"Because a month ago you had cracked ribs and one arm in a sling." And two weeks before that, they'd all just been waiting for the point at which he would inevitably snap. Or at least, she had been. If Steve hadn't come back, she would have given it about another month.  
  
"I'm fine. I just didn't catch much sleep when I was in DC."  
  
"Trust me; we're all glad you're back. Steve spent the entire time stomping around and pretending he wasn't sulking."  
  
Tony's eyebrows went up. "Did something happen?"  
  
"Yes," Jan said, resisting the impulse to roll her eyes. "You went to DC."  
  
"I'm sure Steve can survive a few days on his own." Tony shrugged, clearly dismissing her comments as an exaggeration. "I think he's happy with the way the team is shaping up." He grinned suddenly, the exhaustion fading from his face. "Before I left, I heard him singing in the training room."  
  
Jan grinned back; she had a pretty good idea what Steve had been doing. "What was he singing?"  
  
"Some show tune." Tony's smile got, if possible, even wider. "I think he was dancing."  
  
Steve only did that when he was happy. "Singin' in the Rain or New York, New York?" she asked.  
  
Tony looked blank.  
  
"He always does Gene Kelly songs, even though he's really too big to dance like that. He does pretty well for the first minute or so, but then he always ends up tripping over his own feet. I think he gets embarrassed by the imaginary audience in his head." And, all right, she'd just as good as admitted that she'd been spying on Steve's training sessions for years, but really, who could blame her?  
  
"How come I've never heard of this?" Tony asked. He was still smiling, not the soft expression he usually wore when talking about Steve, but an openly amused one.  
  
"He doesn't do it if he thinks someone's watching." She leaned forward, lowering her voice, and added, "Wanda and I used to sneak into the monitor room to watch him any time he went in to practice by himself, on the off chance that he'd start dancing."  
  
"It's good to know that he's happy in spite of everything that happened. I think he'd tell me if he wasn't, but it's still nice to have some proof." Tony's smile shifted slightly, into something closer to a smirk. "I'll have to tap into the security cameras next time."  
  
"Oh, don't do that," Jan said. "Just call me and we'll meet in the monitor room."  
  
Over Tony's shoulder, she saw Byrne enter the restaurant and exchange a few words with the maitre'de, who gestured at their table. "Put your game face on. The press is here."  
  
Tony's smirk faltered, and then he was wearing the slick, polished smile he reserved exclusively for reporters. Jan fluffed her hair with one hand, and put on a smile of her own, one hopefully less superficial-looking than Tony's.  
  
"Mr. Byrne." She stood and extended her hand as the reporter reached their table. "We're so glad you could make it here this afternoon."  
  
"Ms. Van Dyne, Mr. Stark." He shook both their hands, and seated himself in the table's remaining chair. "Sorry I'm late. Traffic, you know."  
  
"Is there something in particular you're hoping to discuss with us, Mr. Byrne?" Tony asked him, after the waiter had taken their drink orders. "We put out a press release after we dealt with the Venom virus."  
  
"And an admirable exercise in brevity it was." Byrne smile at them toothily. "I think our readers would appreciate some more in-depth information. Just a few weeks ago, you costumed folks were fighting tooth and nail, and now you all seem to be best friends again. I can't help but wonder if there are any lingering hard feelings."  
  
"I can only speak for myself, of course," Jan said, "but I'm thrilled that we've been able to resolve things in a way that's satisfactory to everyone."  
  
"Satisfactory to everyone? You must be aware that there were a number of people who were very unhappy to see the Registration Act come to such an abrupt end."  
  
"I'd like to think this past month has proven that public safety can be better protected without the Registration Act as it stood," Tony said smoothly. "It should be obvious by now that this country's superheroes can perform their jobs better when they're not being micromanaged."  
  
Jan's lips twitched for a second, hearing that. Tony was one of the worst micromanagers she'd ever worked with. He made half the fashion designers in New York seem easy going and calm.  
  
"The government is continuing the training program for younger, less experienced superhumans, as I'm sure you know, and Colorado and Wyoming's Initiative teams have been very successful working with the National Guard to stop those wild fires they've been having trouble with."  
  
"And of course, it's been major news that the two of you, along with several other formerly registered heroes, have reformed an Avengers team with Captain America." Byrne raised his eyebrows, electronic pen poised over the PDA he had produced from a coat pocket. "That must have been interesting to negotiate."  
  
"There wasn't as much negotiating as you might think," Jan told him. "When it came right down to it, Steve Rogers just wants the same thing we do, to keep people safe."  
  
Byrne offered her a self-deprecating smile, and a small shrug, "I've been wondering if his miraculous return might have had something to do with his sudden change of heart."  
  
Tony's smile was beginning to look strained. "I think the fact that the government was finally willing to take his concerns, and the concerns of the general superhuman population seriously had more to do with it. That, and the fact that the attacks on New York and other cities were more important than any individual quarrels."  
  
"The timing worked out very nicely for you, didn't it?" Byrne said. "Captain America coming back just when you needed him. Talk about fortunate coincidences, huh?"  
  
"Very fortunate," Jan said coolly. Where ever he was going with this, it was unlikely to be something they wanted to discuss. Tony could still barely mention Steve's temporary death without flinching.  
  
"You must be thrilled." Byrne smiled again, adding, "Having a resurrected hero to act as your spokesman to Congress, having Captain America back at the head of the Avengers, all charges dropped and everything forgiven. And he never even had to set foot in a courtroom. It couldn't have worked out better for you all if you'd planned it in advance."  
  
Jan stared at him for a moment, unsure if he was actually implying what she thought he was implying. Surely no one could possibly believe that Steve's death had been staged, not when it had been on national television.   
  
Across the table from her, Tony had gone white. "This interview is over," he said quietly. "Leave. Now."  
  
Jan was mildly impressed at his self-control; if she had been in his position, if it had been Hank's death and return Byrne was so unsubtly implying to be a set-up, she wasn't sure she wouldn't have hit him. "I can assure you, it wasn't something we could have possibly planned for. You can tell your paper that we won't be giving any more interviews if Registration or what happened to Steve is all you're interested in discussing. We've said all we have to say on those subjects, and I'm sure people are tired of hearing about them."  
  
Jan looked away from Byrne, back to Tony, to see how he was handling this. He was blank-faced, but his hands, which had been folded loosely in front of him on the table, were now so tightly clenched that she could see his tendons.  
  
"Mr. Stark, Ms. Van Dyne, please, I'm not making any accusations here-" Byrne started.  
  
Jan ignored him. Their table was situated in a corner of the room, near one of the air conditioning vents, which had been blowing freezing air on her ever since they had sat down. Now, the cold air had suddenly stopped.  
  
She glanced up at the vent curiously, and her eyes widened. White vapor was swirling out of it into the room.   
  
She leaned across the table and put a hand on Tony's arm, nodding at the vent. "I think we might have a problem."  
  
  


***

  
  
  
Tony was supposed to have gotten back to New York at nine a.m. Thanks to a combination of last-minute delays, it was now eleven forty-five, and he still hadn't arrived.   
  
Steve had missed Tony while he was gone -- he kept thinking of something he wanted to say to him, or needed to ask him, and then remembering that he wasn't there. It was like reaching for his shield only to remember that he was wearing civilian clothing and didn't have it with him.  
  
With Tony absent, the tower didn't feel like home, somehow. Possibly because most of his things were still in boxes, sitting unopened in the corners of the room he was sharing with Tony. Some of them were still sealed with packing tape.   
  
It just hadn't felt like the right time to unpack them yet.  
  
Steve finished toweling his hair dry and dropped the towel on top of the nearest stack of boxes, all of them neatly labeled in Jarvis's precise scrip. Jarvis had offered several times to either unpack everything for Steve, or return the boxes to storage, but neither option had felt right, so the boxes remained.  
  
Steve pulled on a clean shirt, then guiltily picked the towel back up and went to hang it on the appropriate towel rack in the bathroom. He'd hoped that working out would alleviate the restless boredom that had been plaguing him all morning. Unfortunately, Clint and Sam had both refused to spar with him, claiming that he was just grouchy and looking for someone to hit, and beating up a punching bag wasn't nearly as satisfying.  
  
What on earth could be keeping Tony?  
  
At least his absence hadn't been as bad as last month, when Steve had found himself unable to sleep without Tony's warm presence in his bed to keep nightmares at bay. Only after he had finally given in and called Tony at sometime after one in the morning had he been able to fall asleep.  
  
But there had been no nightmares this time, not the old ones of the explosion and Bucky's death, or the new ones of gunshots and drowning in blood.   
  
Things were finally starting to get better.   
  
Tony had seemed better lately, too, now that his ribs had finally healed and the Extremis-induced nosebleeds had gone away. He'd been less tense, as well. Of course, nearly a week arguing with politicians and military officials had probably put paid to that, but Steve was confident that it would only take a few hours alone with Tony to get him to relax again.  
  
Hell, he’d been looking forward to getting Tony to relax. Only, of course, Tony wasn't there. It probably hadn't been fair to take his disappointment out on Clint, but when Clint had offered him a leering grin over the breakfast table (a good half an hour after Tony had been due to arrive) and asked if Steve had any "plans" for when Tony got back, the retort that Clint was just jealous because he was still single had been out of Steve's mouth before he realize d that he sounded incredibly immature. Clint had informed him that he wasn't jealous, and that he if he wanted a girlfriend, he could go out and find one, and more easily than Steve could have, too. Then Hank had started laughing, and Sam, traitor that he was, had announced that Clint was right, and things had gone downhill from there.  
  
He would apologize to Clint later, Steve decided. Right now, he was going to go down to Tony's office, on the off chance that he'd already arrived and gone directly there. And given that Tony's employees seemed to need him to hold their hands for everything, it wasn't impossible that that was exactly what had happened.  
  
Tony, unfortunately, was not in his office. Pepper Potts-Hogan, however, was. She was sitting behind Tony's desk, muttering to herself as she went through a stack of papers. "I spend a month in California, and everyone in this company misplaces their brain."  
  
Steve hesitated in the doorway. Pepper must have sensed him somehow -- heard him, maybe -- because she looked up, stared at him for a moment, and then gave him a rueful smile.   
  
"Tony's not here yet," she told him. "Or at least, I'm guessing that's why you're here."  
  
"Oh," Steve said. He hadn't really thought Tony would be, but it had been worth checking. "Do you know when he will be? Here, I mean."  
  
"Whenever he gets done with that reporter he was supposed to meet today. Janet Van Dyne grabbed him as soon as he came in the door; you just missed him, actually." She nodded at the corner of a suitcase that was just visible on the other side of the desk.  
  
"Oh," Steve repeated, disappointed and feeling a little cheated. He  _could_  have seen Tony, if only briefly, if he'd thought to come and wait here earlier. Still, resenting whatever reporter they were meeting with was irrational and probably petty. "I'll let you get back to work."  
  
"Actually, I've been meaning to talk to you." Pepper waved at one of the chair by the desk, adding, "Why don't you come in?"  
  
Steve obediently came in, and sat. He didn't know Pepper very well, but she seemed nice. She was also oddly intimidating, but that might just be the effect of all of the stories he'd heard from Tony over the years.  
  
"What did you want to talk about?"  
  
"I've heard that you and Tony are involved now," she said, offering him a faint grin. Now that he was closer to her, Steve could see a scattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose; combined with the smile, they made her look impish despite her sharp suit.   
  
Steve nodded, not really sure what he was supposed to say. He had no intention of hiding his relationship with Tony, but the idea that he could just come out and tell people that he was involved with another man was still new to him.  
  
"Good," Pepper said. "I'm glad he's finally found someone who deserves him, instead of another stupid bimbo or a supervillain."  
  
Steve grinned, feeling ridiculously pleased. Pepper was one of the only people left who had known Tony longer than he had, and her opinion was important to Tony; it was good to know that she didn't have any problem with their relationship -- though given how long she'd worked for Tony, the fact that Tony liked men as well as women couldn't have been much of a surprise.  
  
"I never thought this could happen," he admitted. "But you have no idea how glad I am that it did."  
  
"I wasn't exactly expecting it, either," she said. "I always thought you were as straight as they come."  
  
Steve smiled a little. "Honestly, I always thought Tony was, too."  
  
Pepper let out a short bark of laughter. "Really? You and Rhodey are the most oblivious men on the planet. I mean, for God's sake,  _Happy_  figured it out." She stopped, eyes suddenly moving away from Steve, toward her hand, where she would have worn a wedding ring, once. "Actually, I think Happy figured it out before I did. He was good at things like that. He knew Tony was Iron Man before I did, too."  
  
Once again, Steve didn't know what to say. He had come back, and her husband hadn't. Just moments ago, he had been grinning ear-to-ear about him and Tony, but now, as Pepper stared silently at her hands, he felt oddly guilty. Guilty for being happy, for getting a second chance when her husband hadn't.  
  
"I didn't know Mr. Hogan very well, but he always seemed like a real nice guy," Steve said awkwardly, "and I know Tony misses him a lot."  
  
Pepper smiled, a small, sad smile. "There was a while there when the three of us were all each of us had. I guess it made us almost like a family."   
  
"I know what you mean," Steve said. During the war, he and Bucky had been the closest thing to family either of them had had, and then, after that, there had been the Avengers.  
  
"Now I don't know what to say to him, sometimes," she said softly, still staring at her hands.  
  
Tony had been the one to turn off Happy's life support, when he had been slowly dying from a supervillain's beating. Pepper must have known; Tony wouldn't have done something like that without telling her first.  
  
"I'm sorry," Steve tried. It was a clichÉ, but it was the least trite clichÉ he could think of.  
  
Pepper looked up from her hands, catching and holding Steve's eyes. "Hurt him," she said, "and I'll make you pay."  
  
"I would never hurt Tony." The words were automatic, said before he'd even thought about them.  
  
"I don't think you would on purpose," she said, holding up a hand, "but, I mean, you come back from the dead, and suddenly you're bisexual? I know Tony can't have been in good shape when you came back; he was in bad shape even before. I saw what it did to him to fight you. You're probably pretty mixed up right now, and I'm sure he threw himself at you, and... Look, the last thing Tony needs at this point is for another relationship to crash and burn."  
  
"I didn't like fighting him, either," Steve protested. It had been the worst few months of his entire life, made even worse because he'd known that, even if the rest of the world could be saved, his friendship with Tony was lost forever.  
  
It still surprised him occasionally to wake up and find Tony in bed next to him.  
  
"Captain America, Steve, have you ever been with another man before Tony?"   
  
Steve could feel himself blushing. "I don't see how that matters," he said, more primly than he'd intended to. "Or that it's any of your business." He didn't actually add "young lady" to the end of that, but the temptation was strong.  
  
"Oh, it's not," she assured him cheerfully. "But I answer Tony's phone and open his mail, so I know all of his business anyway."  
  
Why did people keep assuming that he had just rushed into this without thinking and had no idea what he was getting into? All right, he  _had_  rushed into it without thinking, but Steve knew perfectly well what he was getting into and what he wanted. And he certainly wouldn't lead Tony on, regardless.  
  
"If anything," Steve said, face hot, "I threw myself at him."  
  
"Oh." Pepper flashed him a momentary grin. "I guess that makes a difference, doesn't it? But the threat stands. Hurt him, and I'll hurt you." She said this with such confidence that it never occurred to Steve to doubt that she could carry said threat out, and never mind that she was a foot shorter than him.  
  
His Avengers communicator chose that moment to chime, rescuing Steve from the conversation.  
  
"Rogers," he said as he activated it. With any luck, it would be Tony, announcing that he and Jan had finished with the reporter and were on their way home.  
  
"Steve!" It was Jan's voice, something about it sounding strange. "There's some kind of airborne toxin in here. Everyone's going crazy. Panicking. I don't know." She was speaking quickly, almost babbling, voice shaking. "I- Oh God, we can't use force, they're civilians. And I'm compromised. Just- send someone." There was a shrill, drawn-out scream in the background, and the communicator cut off abruptly.  
  
Steve closed his eyes for a long moment, hands clenching uselessly into fists at his sides, then exhaled, forcing himself to treat this like he would any other emergency.  
  
All right, this was not good. Jan--and presumably Tony as well--were out there somewhere dealing with an unknown toxin and a bunch of compromised civilians that they couldn't afford to fight back against. And to make things worse, Jan had been exposed to whatever it was.  
  
He stood, already moving towards the door. "Where are they?" he barked at Pepper.  
  
"The Meridian," she said, all business. "It's on Wall Street." She snatched a sticky-note from the corner of Tony's desk and thrust it at Steve. "Here's the address."   
  
Steve activated his communicator again. "Hank-" he started.  
  
"I heard," Hank's voice came through sharply. "I'm contacting everyone as we speak. Falcon, Carol, Hawkeye, War Machine. Where should I tell them to go?"  
  
"The Meridian," Steve told him.  
  
There was a soft exhalation from Hank, and then, "Okay, I know where that is."  
  
"Tell them I'll meet them there," Steve said. "Rogers out."  
  
  


***

  
  
  
The white vapor completely filled the room now, hanging in the air like fog.   
  
"I can't open the doors," Tony announced. "Something's blocking them on the other side."  
  
That was so very much not what they needed. "Blast them," Jan shouted back. "We need to get these people out of here, away from whatever this is."  _They_  needed to get away from it. She was breathing the stuff in right now, had been for at least five minutes, and she had no idea what it was.  
  
She did, however, have a pretty good idea of what it did to people.  
  
One woman had been screaming in a loud, drawn-out wail for at least three minutes. She had backed into a corner, hands over her eyes, a salad fork still clutched in one white knuckled fist.  
  
The rest of the room was just as bad. People were screaming, crying, and hiding under tables. Others had started throwing things and lashing out at everyone around them. If they didn't get out of here now, someone was going to get hurt.  
  
Where were the others? She had called for them ages ago; why weren't they here yet?   
  
Had something happened to them? What if they weren't coming, and she and Tony were on their own?  
  
"Just hit it with a repulsor beam!" she yelled.  
  
"I can't!" She couldn't see Tony's face -- he'd summoned his armor as soon as they'd realized the air was contaminated -- but he sounded as desperate as she felt. "There's too many people. I could hurt someone!"  
  
"You have to help me." Byrne's hands locked around her arm as he fell to his knees on the floor beside her. "They've all gone insane! You have to stop them! You have to protect me!"  
  
"Let go of me," Jan snapped, trying to jerk her arm away. It was no use -- he was bigger and stronger than she was, and with an unknown toxin filling the air, she didn't dare shrink down and hide. She would only poison herself quicker that way.  
  
She knew how to fight. She had to remember that. She had combat training from some of the most skilled fighters in the world; she could protect herself.  
  
But this man -- all of these people -- were innocent civilians who had been exposed to the same toxin as she had, and if she tried anything, she could hurt one of them, and as off-balance as she was right now, she might not even realize it, might really hurt one of the people she was supposed to be protecting.  
  
She still couldn't just leave Tony to deal with all of this alone.   
  
Byrne was still clutching her arm tightly enough that it hurt. He was hurting her. She was still clear headed enough to know that she couldn't hurt him, though.  
  
She couldn't use her stingers at full size, but Byrne didn’t know that.  
  
"Let. Go," she hissed. "Or I will zap you." He flinched back, releasing his death grip on her arm, and she shoved him toward the nearest table. "Get under there and stay down. You'll be safe there."  
  
Byrne, thank God, did as he was told.  
  
The screaming woman was still screaming. God, why wouldn't she shut up?  
  
A blond man in an expensive business suit was brandishing a steak knife at another, equally expensively-attired, man. "Stay back!" he shouted. "No. Stop it! I said stay back!" and then he was lunging at the other man, knife extended in front of him.  
  
Tony threw himself between them, the knife skidding harmlessly across the front of his armor. The man he had just saved screamed, and started pounding on the armor with his fists.  
  
"Get away from him, robot!"  
  
An older man had fallen to his knees beside his chair, one hand clutching at his chest. A dark-haired woman was sitting on the floor next to him, tears streaming from her closed eyes, rocking back and forth. Another woman was pounding on one of the doors with her fists, her perfectly manicured brown hands leaving smears of blood on the wood. There were people running back and forth from one side of the room to another, pursued by something only they could see; people clinging to one another in panic, motionless and whimpering; and one table of stock brokers had gotten into a fist-fight.  
  
She couldn't do this. There were too many people, too much noise, and everyone was so big, and--  
  
That man was probably dying. She couldn't give in to this. Jan started towards the older man, the one who looked like he might be having a heart attack.  
  
Then she stopped, hesitating, as she heard a child somewhere start to wail.  
  
It was a little girl, no more than three or four. She was standing in the middle of the floor sobbing, people rushing past her obliviously. "Mommy! Mommy!"  
  
Someone was going to trample her, or worse.  
  
Jan shoved her way through the crowd, ducking under a chair that one of the stock brokers threw at her. It crashed into the window, creating a spiderweb of cracks in the glass.  
  
She picked the little girl up. Thankfully, instead of panicking further, the child clung to her, burying her face in Jan's neck, snuffling quietly. Her face was hot, and damp with tears.  
  
Jan carried her back to the table she'd shoved Byrne under, absently murmuring to her as she did so. "It's okay, it's okay. You're safe now."  
  
"Take her," she told Byrne, as she knelt by the table, trying to disentangle the girl's arms from around her neck. "Make sure nobody hurts her."  
  
"No!" the child screamed. "I want to stay with you!"  
  
"You can't go back out there." Byrne grabbed Jan's wrist, interfering in her attempts to get the little girl to let go. "It's not safe out there!"  
  
"Stay with the nice man," Jan said through clenched teeth, shaking off Byrne's grip. The little girl hiccuped once, then let go, still crying, and latched onto Byrne.  
  
He shuffled backwards, farther under the table, and jerked the table cloth down, hiding them from view.  
  
The screams from the corner suddenly stopped, and Jan looked over just in time to see her begin to run towards the broken window.  
  
Tony was in the middle of the stock brokers, trying to separate them. Two of them had ahold of his arms, and a third was battering at him with another chair, while the fourth attempted to detach one of the others away from Tony in order to continue their fight.  
  
Jan took off after the woman, catching up with her just as she reached the window and grabbing her by the elbow.  
  
There was a sudden flash of pain in her arm as the woman rounded on her and sank the salad fork she was still clutching into her forearm. Then she was free, and running for the window again, shattering the already cracked glass with one shoulder and falling through it.  
  
Jan stood in front of the open window, air from outside blowing in onto her face, frozen with horror.  
  
And then War Machine's bulky grey armor appeared in front of her. "Don't worry," he said. "Falcon's got her. And the cavalry's here."  
  
  


***

  
  
At first glance, Wall Street looked perfectly normal, right down to the dozens of pedestrians clogging the sidewalk, everything from business-suited lawyers, to Japanese tourists, to teenagers in those ugly jeans that came pre-worn and paint-stained. Then the glass on the top floor window of one the buildings shattered outward, and a woman burst through it to fall screaming towards the street.  
  
Sam banked left, then folded his wings and went into a steep dive, leaving Redwing to circle above the street alone. He'd only have once chance to grab her; the air was dead calm, with no lift to speak of, so once he'd lost altitude, he wouldn't be able to climb back up for another try, and if he missed, she was as good as dead.  
  
He caught the woman around the waist, snapping his wings back out to halt their descent. She screamed even more loudly, and stabbed him in the shoulder with a fork.  
  
There were days when Sam hated this job.  
  
"It's okay," he shouted, trying not to drop her as she kicked at him. "I've got you! You're safe!" Whatever had happened to this woman, she clearly wasn't hearing him; she just kept on screaming and struggling.  
  
Sam released her once they were within a few feet of the ground. As soon as her feet hit the pavement, she was off and running.  
  
She made it about ten feet before she ran straight into Hawkeye. He grabbed her by the shoulders and the two of them promptly began struggling over the fork. "Look, lady, I'm not gonna hurt you, okay? Ouch, shit, will you stop that?"  
  
Redwing swooped down to settle on Sam's shoulder, making a soft, chirring noise of protest at being left behind. Then Steve appeared at Sam's side, grabbing him by the elbow. "Can you get back up?' he asked, tone abrupt, no preamble at all. "War Machine's gone into the dining room, so if anyone else jumps, there's only Carol to catch them."   
  
"No," Sam said shortly, responding in kind. "There's no lift here; I'd need to climb something and jump to get airborne."  
  
"So we're down to two flyers. You're with me. We need to start evacuating the building." Steve was in crisis mode, all stiff shoulders and barked orders. "Hawkeye-" he snapped, turning and stabbing a finger at Clint, "take her to the paramedics. Then get back here and join us."  
  
Clint gave him a deliberately sloppy salute. "Right away, oh fearless leader."  
  
"There's an airborne toxin in there, Clint. Just shut up and do it."  
  
They had no idea what the substance the people in the building had been exposed to, or how widespread the contamination was -- all they had was Jan's alarmingly vague description. If they were lucky, whatever it was had only been released on the top floor. If they were unlucky, the building had one those ventilation systems that recycled air from room to room, and the toxin had been vented into every part of the building by now.  
  
The first thing Sam had done when he'd gotten the alert was to tell Hank to call whomever was in charge of the building the Meridian was located in and get him to have a copy of the building plans ready. The guy was supposed to be waiting for them in the lobby with the plans, ready to start the evacuation as soon as they got the go ahead from War Machine that it wasn't some kind of bioweapon.  
  
The first cops and emergency personnel were just starting to arrive, with more sirens approaching in the distance, when Sam and Steve reached the building's tall, glass doors.  
  
"Armor's filters say it's a chemical compound of some kind," War Machine's voice crackled over the commlink. "No live DNA or bio-organisms. Tell the emergency people standard gas masks ought to work."  
  
Right. There was one piece of luck. Sam donned his own gas mask, then dislodged a disgruntled Redwing talon-by-talon from his shoulder. "Sorry, buddy. We don't have any masks in your size." Redwing informed him that if something jumped Sam while he wasn't there to watch his back, it would Sam's fault, and that he was going to go back up to the roofline to watch the humans' pathetic attempts at flight some more.  
  
Sam extended one arm, letting Redwing walk down his shoulder to his wrist, and then flung him up into the air. Then he nodded to Steve and pushed open the door, hoping like hell that the building manager wasn't going to be hiding under his desk or screaming incoherently. The last thing they needed right now was to be stabbed with a Mont Blanc pen.  
  
Once inside, their luck held. The lobby was filled with people, most wearing business suits, all of them lined up loosely along the walls by the door. The building manager, a tall, middle-aged man whose dark hair was receding in front, was waiting at the front desk with a sheaf of architectural plans.  
  
"Here," he said, thrusting the plans at Sam. "This is everything we could find. Somebody hacked our computer mainframe and shut off our air system, not to mention all of the security cameras on the top floor, so none of this stuff's being circulated out, but we've also got no damn idea what's going on up there."  
  
"That was a good move," Steve said softly, more to himself than to Sam or the building manager, and Sam was sure from the look in his eyes that he had assumed that their hacker was Tony.  
  
Sam spread the plans out across the tall receptionist's desk, shoving a bowl of wrapped candies, a pen on the end of a silver chain, and a potted African violet out of the way. The building was old, only nine stories, and the stairwells were located at the east and west corners. Elevators were in the center, but they could count those out; anybody who could put a gas in the ventilation system could probably be counted on to tamper with the elevators.  
  
"Sir, we need you to go outside and tell the police and firemen that they can start coming in," Steve told the building manager. "We've determined that the attack is chemical rather than biological, but they're still going to need breathing gear."  
  
"I'll do that," the building manager said hurriedly. He was obviously desperate for an excuse to get out of the building, but Sam couldn't really blame him under the circumstances. "It's such a relief to have you people back."  
  
"Go get the firemen," Steve repeated, already turning away to look at the plans. "If you see a man wearing purple leather, tell him to get in here."  
  
The man raised his eyebrows slightly at that, but nodded and hurried to the head of the evacuation line. He pushed open the door and started ushering people out, looking oddly like Sam's old high school principal as he instructed people to stay single file, and no pushing, please. After the first six or so men and women had gone out, he followed them, and a red-uniformed hotel staffer took over the door-holding position.  
  
"We'll take the stairs to the top floor," Steve said, one finger tracing the line of the stairwell on the map.  
  
Sam borrowed Redwing's eyes for a moment, using the falcon's vision to look through the top floor windows. There was always a moment of disorientation when he did that, as the world came into sudden, startling clarity. He'd occasionally wondered if this was what it was like for nearsighted people when they put on glasses.  
  
Jagged shards of glass still lined the windowsill of the window the woman had jumped from. Beyond it was chaos, people running, crying, hitting each other, throwing things. He couldn't see Jan, but War Machine and Iron Man both stood out clearly, each surrounded by people who were either attacking them or clinging to them.  
  
"Looks like that's the main problem area," Sam agreed. He blinked, pulling his vision away from Redwing's and looking through his own eyes again. Steve was blurred for a moment, and then everything readjusted and was normal again. "Everyone down here looks pretty normal. But if we start bringing screaming, hysterical people down from the restaurant, that's gonna change pretty quickly." The two of them started towards the stairwell, keeping their pace to a quick walk. If the people crowded into the lobby saw them running, it wouldn't help in keeping the calm.  
  
"We can keep everyone up there contained until Clint and the emergency personnel have cleared the lower floors," Steve said, pulling open the stairwell's heavy fire door.  
  
Sam nodded. "If there are any medical emergencies, Ms. Marvel, War Machine, and I can fly them down."  
  
"War Machine, Ms. Marvel," Steve said into his commlink, "The Falcon and I are coming up. Keep everyone contained on the top floor until we get there. If there's anyone who needs immediate medical attention, one of you can take them down to the paramedics by air."  
  
"Copy that, Cap," Carol said. "I'm taking out the rest of the windows now; we need to get some fresh air in here. There's this white vapor shit everywhere, almost too thick to see through."  
  
"Go ahead," War Machine's voice this time, "but get ready to catch more jumpers when you do."  
  
They swept each floor as they went up, a quick walk-through to ensure that people were actually evacuating and that nobody was being overlooked. The first and second floors were nearly empty, the third floor entirely so, and as they climbed the flights of stairs between floors, they passed a good two dozen people going down. Some of them looked relieved upon seeing Sam and Steve. More of them went wide-eyed and started to hurry down the steps faster.   
  
Sam wasn't sure it had as much to do with the recent Registration mess as it did the fact that superheroes showing up in the middle of a building evacuation had never been taken as a positive sign by most New Yorkers.  
  
One woman broke into a near-run, grabbing a teenage boy's wrist and forcibly pulling him along behind her. "Mom," he whined, "it's Captain America and the Falcon! I want to see them kick ass!"  
  
"Cap." War Machine's voice again. "I think we might have a problem up here. What ever this stuff is, it's got people totally freaked out; I think half of them are having full on hallucinations, and trust me when I say that I've seen what happens when superhumans are exposed to that sort of thing. It's not good. Tony and the Wasp seem like they're handling it, but Carol's got her hands full at the windows, and I don't want to be the only person up here if the Wasp flips out and grows to twenty feet. Not to mention that if Tony's been exposed, we've got to get him out of the armor before he panics and blows somebody's head off."  
  
Sam and Steve exchanged glances. "Forget the building sweep," Sam said. "The firemen can handle it."  
  



	3. Chapter 3

  
  
The dining room doors were old fashioned, made of heavy, polished wood, with ornate brass knobs. They were incongruously secured shut by some kind of heavy, electronic lock, which had a keypad, a small, blinking red light on top, and the look of something that would explode if they entered the wrong combination.  
  
"War Machine?" Steve snapped into his commlink. "We need a way in. Avoid the center of the doors; there's some kind of armed lock."  
  
"You two standing clear?" Rhodey asked.  
  
"We're clear," Sam said, as the two of them ducked to one side.  
  
There was flare of light, and then the smell of smoke filled the air and there was a large, round hole in the left-hand door.  
  
They were through the door in moments, Steve taking point, with his shield up to block any potential assault. The dining room was a mess; broken porcelain and glass littered the carpet, and half the tables had been over-turned. Things were calmer than he had expected, though not in any way Steve found comforting; most of the people were huddled in corners or unconscious on the floor. Carol was giving a middle-aged man CPR, and a dark-skinned woman lay on the floor inches from the door, hands bloody and fingernails ripped away. Steve had to step over her to enter the room.  
  
Tony was standing in the middle of the disaster area the restaurant had become, completely motionless, the armor making him look like an incongruous art deco statue. Steve jerked his eyes away from Tony to make a quick scan of the rest of the room -- Jan was kneeling on the floor behind a table, a small child firmly attached to her neck; War Machine was restraining a man in a white waiter's jacket who was still clutching a steak knife in one hand -- before his gaze was pulled back to Tony.  
  
"Carol," he said, and his voice sounded calmer than he'd expected it to be, given the way Tony was just standing there silently, "take him," Steve nodded at the man she was performing chest compression on, "down to the EMTs. They'll be able to do more for him than you can."  
  
"Just waiting for you guys to get here," she said. She slid one arm under the man's back and the other under his knees, and stood, carrying him to the window. "I think things are starting to wind down; a lot of the victims have collapsed." She took off out the window, and Steve took a few slow steps closer to Tony.  
  
"They're coming," Rhodey's waiter was whimpering. "They're coming. Do you know what they're going to do to me? I can't let them. I can't!"  
  
"Tony." Steve took a slow step towards him. "What's your status?"  
  
The red and gold helmet turned slowly toward him. "Steve?" Tony's voice sounded distant. "Where did the blood come from? Repulsor burns don't bleed."  
  
Shit. "Tony," Steve said, exercising all of his self-control in order to keep his voice low and steady, "were you exposed to the toxin?"  
  
Tony cocked his head to one side slightly, as if considering that. "Are there dead bodies all over the floor?"  
  
Steve shook his head. "No," he said gently. "They're unconscious. No one's dead."  
  
"Then I was exposed." Given the situation, Tony sounded strangely calm. There was no discernible emotion in his voice, and Steve was uneasily reminded of watching him on the news after the Helicarrier had blown up, and hearing that same empty calm when he spoke.  
  
Steve took another slow step forward. "Tony," he said, still gently, "I need you to take off your armor." Before you hurt someone. Before they found out that whatever this was   
was a slow poison on top of everything else. Steve took a final step, closing the gap between them, and laid one hand on the cool metal of Tony's arm. "You need to let the paramedics treat you."  
  
Tony jerked away, shaking his head sharply. "I can't take it off." There was a note of panic in his voice now. "I'm not safe without it."  
  
Steve put a hand on Tony's arm again, made his voice more firm. "Tony, you need to take your armor off, or you could hurt someone."   
  
After an impossibly long moment, Tony nodded. Then he collapsed to his knees, the joints of the armor rattling faintly, and sagged forward, one hand flat against the floor.  
  
"Tony!" Steve dropped to one knee in front of him, reaching for his shoulders, and then Tony went completely limp inside the armor, crumpling to the floor to lie half-curled on his side, legs twisted under him.  
  
Steve stared at him for one frozen moment, very aware that no one but Tony himself could remove the armor these days. Unless Pepper had an emergency override code? He hadn't thought to ask, how could he not have asked?   
  
Tony's chestplate was hard and smooth under his palm. Anything could be happening to Tony inside the armor; he might simply be unconscious, or he might have gone into cardiac arrest like the man Carol had carried out. They might have only a minute or so to treat him, and it would take far longer than that to get Pepper; the armor's codes were all voice-printed, and if she did have one, she'd have to verbally input it in person. Cutting the armor off him would take even longer, at least half an hour.  
  
He knew it wasn't going to work, knew Tony had to have changed his access codes during the Registration fight, but even trying something useless was better than doing nothing. "Armor override Steve Rogers," he said, the words hurting his throat. "Code 34-44-54-64."  
  
The armor opened up under his hands, red and gold metal falling away and clattering to the floor, leaving Tony lying half in Steve’s lap. He wearing the remains of what had probably started the day as a nice suit -- wrinkled black slacks and a white dress shirt, the fabric crumpled into shapelessness by the armor. His hair was stuck to his forehead with sweat, and he was breathing in shallow gasps.  
  
Steve closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again and reached down to brush a piece of damp hair away from Tony's face.  
  
"I'll take him down to the ambulance guys."  
  
Steve looked up sharply to find Rhodey standing over them. "No," he snapped. "I'll do it."  
  
"Unless you can fly now, one of us is going to have to," Sam informed him levelly.  
  
"So, what did I miss?" Clint's voice.  
  
Steve looked back over his shoulder to see Clint climbing through the hole in the door, bow in one hand, but quiver conspicuously empty of arrows.  
  
"Clint!" Jan jumped to her feet, letting go of the child she'd been huddled with, and dashed over to Clint. She buried her face in the front of his costume, her shoulders shaking. Was she actually crying?  
  
Clint froze, the visible portions of his face a study in shock. "Shit," he blurted out. "Don't tell me Tony's dead."  
  
"Everyone's so big, and so loud," Jan sniffed, her voice just audible from where Steve knelt by Tony. "Help me, Clint. I'm scared."  
  
Behind his purple mask, Clint's eyes opened even wider. "Um, it's okay?" he tried.  
  
Jan made a sort of sighing noise, and sagged against him. Clint grabbed for her, catching her around the shoulders before she could hit the floor. "They breathed that stuff in, didn't they?" He looked at Steve as he spoke, his tone imploring Steve to tell him that it was under control, was going to be all right.  
  
Steve wished he could. "Yes," he said. "They've both been affected." First Tony and then Jan, and there was nothing he could do to remedy it. By the time the Avengers had gotten the call, they would have already been exposed. "I don't- I don't know what it's doing to them."  
  
"Steve." Sam put a hand on his shoulder. Steve looked up at him, realizing dully that he was still stroking Tony's hair.  
  
He slid his arms under Tony and stood, bracing himself against Tony's weight. "Get him down to the ambulance," he told Sam.   
  
Sam didn't reply, just nodded and took Tony from him, draping Tony's arm over his neck and wrapping his own arm around Tony waist. Then his hard-light wings snapped out, and he stepped out the window.  
  
Steve stared after him for a moment, then wrenched his gaze away from the broken window and the empty space beyond and turned to Clint. "Give Jan to War Machine. He'll take her down."  
  
"The paramedics were following me up," Clint said. "They should be here soon."  
  
"Clint, just do it."  
  
"If we leave the armor here, Tony will kill us," Rhodey said, gesturing at the scattered pieces of Tony's arm with a clunky metal arm.  
  
"I've got it." Steve took a deep breath, hoping his minor miracle was still working, and commanded the armor to return itself to Tony's briefcase. Luck was still with him; the pieces floated up into the air and repacked themselves neatly into the metal case.  
  
Carol rose into view outside the window, stepping carefully over the broken glass and back into the room. "Who else needs to go down?" she asked.  
  
"Jan-" Clint started, just as ambulance personnel began climbing through the broken door behind him.  
  
"We'll take her, sir," one of them said, stepping over to Clint. His companion, a short woman with a red ponytail pulled through the back of her baseball cap, stared around the room at the wreckage.  
  
"Damn," she said. "Could one of you guys punch that hole in the door a little bigger? We're going to need to get a lot of stretchers up here."  
  
"Gladly," Carol said.  
  
"Someone needs to contact Hank," Steve said. He needed to know what had happened to Jan, and he was also their best bet on finding out what this stuff she and Tony -- and all of these other people -- had breathed in was. "Ms. Marvel, War Machine, you stay here and help the paramedics get people out."  
  
"No problem," Carol said. She planted her feet and slammed one fist into the edge of the hole Rhodey had burned through the door, breaking through another section of wood. "Want me to handle the press as well?"  
  
Steve gave her a grateful look. "If you wouldn't mind."  
  
Clint half-raised one hand. "I can tell Hank," he volunteered.  
  
Steve nodded. "I'm going back down."  
  
The stairs seemed much longer going down than coming up.  
  
The ambulances had turned off their sirens, but their lights were still flashing garishly. There was a ladder truck there now, too, the firemen busily extending the ladder towards the building's top floor.  
  
There were also three news vans, including, inevitably, one from channel five. Kristine Sullivan, a cameraman in tow, had cornered Sam and was holding a microphone in his face. "A video has recently surfaced on the internet wherein A.I.M. claims responsibility for this act of terrorism. Can you confirm or deny their involvement?"  
  
"We've been busy getting people out of the building," Sam told her. He was standing very straight, arms folded across his chest, and was holding his head tilted slightly to one side, the way he did when he was considering something. Sam was no fonder of talking to the media than Steve was. "We haven't had time to check the internet."  
  
"Have you uncovered any evidence that it was in fact A.I.M.? Has anyone been taken into custody?"  
  
No, Steve answered her silently, because that would require actually having the guts to show up in person. He wished they had shown their faces, whether 'they' was in fact A.I.M. or some other group; someone ought to be made to answer for this.  
  
The relief on Sam's face when he caught sight of Steve heading toward them was obvious even from several yards away.  
  
"Sorry," Sam told Ms. Sullivan, "Gotta go." He turned his back on her without giving her a chance to respond and hurried over to Steve. "Paramedics say the people who were evacuated through the lobby all seem okay, but they're taking them all to St. Vincent's and a couple of other hospitals to run some tests and make sure."  
  
Steve nodded. That made sense; taking them all to one place would have flooded the emergency room before capacity. "And Tony?"  
  
Sam nodded at one of the ambulances, and Steve turned to see Tony, strapped to a stretcher with an oxygen mask over his face, being loaded onto it.  
  
"Man, are we lucky he gave you new access codes to his armor," Sam said, shaking his head slightly. "If he'd gone crazy like some of those people did, I don't even want to think about how much damage he would have caused."  
  
Except, Tony hadn't given him new access codes. He'd been too much of an idiot to ask, and Tony couldn't have simply reloaded the old ones; he would have needed a fresh voiceprint from Steve. "He never changed the access code."  
  
Sam turned to look at him. "What?"  
  
"I didn't think it would work," Steve explained. "I just couldn't stand doing nothing. The over-ride code I used was my old one. Tony never changed it."  
  
Sam blinked. "You mean," he said, slowly and calmly, "you could have shut him down at any point during that whole mess?"  
  
"I assumed he'd changed it!" Steve said defensively. It was insane for Tony not to have, to leave such a massive weak point in his defenses. He must have forgotten about it, ludicrous as that sounded. He had been juggling a lot of different things then, and he might have just overlooked that detail.  
  
Or he hadn't been able to bring himself to change it and shut Steve out of his life that last little bit; the way Steve hadn't been able to keep himself from answering when Tony had called his cell phone.  
  
"I can not believe you didn't even check," Sam muttered, shaking his head again. "You're supposed to be a strategist."  
  
"I didn't think there was any point," Steve said. The paramedics closed the ambulance's back door, shutting Tony away from sight. "We were fighting. If it was me, changing those codes would have been the first thing I'd have done." The problem was, even when things had been at their worst, Tony hadn't thought of him an enemy. Steve couldn't say the same about himself -- he  _had_  been thinking of Tony as an enemy, after that first fight. He hadn't wanted to, but he hadn't had a choice, and he'd been miserable with it the whole time.  
  
There was a sudden, jarring blast of sound as the ambulance turned its siren back on, pulling out into the street and away around a corner.  
  
  


***

  
  
  
Clint had visited the emergency room in St. Vincent's on a number of occasions, both as a patient and as an actual visitor, but he'd never seen it this crowded. The waiting room was jammed with people who had been on the lower floors of the building the Meridian was in, waiting to have their blood tested; since the emergency room also had its usual complement of car accident survivors, mugging victims, people with the flu, and assorted runners up for the Darwin awards, they were low on the priority list and were probably going to have to wait a while.  
  
The moment he, Cap, and the Falcon walked through the emergency room doors, everyone in the waiting room turned to stare at them. Well, everyone except for the teenager throwing up into a basin. Clint limped onward, doing his best to ignore the stares; they weren't staring at him because they all knew he'd been humiliatingly stabbed by one of his own arrows. It just felt like they were. They were probably staring at Cap, who had always attracted attention wherever he went, and tended to do so even more these days.  
  
"I don't need stitches and I don't need a tetanus shot," Clint protested to Cap for the third time.  
  
Cap kept his eyes focused straight ahead, not bothering to look at Clint. "You were stabbed in the arm with a fork, and your leg is bleeding."  
  
"She stabbed me, too, if that makes you feel better," Sam offered. "Of course, it wasn't with my own weapon."  
  
"Ahaha. Very funny," Clint muttered. "Where do you think they've got Jan and Tony?" The EMTs hadn't let him ride in the ambulance with Jan. Of course, they hadn't let Cap ride along with Tony, either, so that wasn't all that surprising. He wondered, if Hank had been there, if they would have let  _him_  ride along with Jan. Probably.  
  
"We'll find out," Cap said, in a tone that promised unfortunate things to anyone who stood in their way. He started for the nurse's desk. Clint fell into step just behind him, and Sam moved up to flank him on the other side. The young man behind the desk looked up as they approached, his eyes widening.  
  
"May I help you?" A blonde woman in a neat nurse's uniform stepped around the corner of the desk, intercepting them. She was about ten years older than Clint, but very attractive, in an efficient, well-put-together kind of way.  
  
"Tony Stark and Janet Van Dyne," Sam said, not giving Cap a chance to speak. "The paramedics just brought them in."  
  
"With the victims from the mass poisoning on Wall Street," she confirmed, nodding. "Are you relatives?" She eyed their costumes with an expression that said that she knew perfectly well that they weren't.  
  
"No, Nurse," Clint glanced quickly at the woman's name tag, "McCall. We're not. But Jan's ex-husband isn't here yet, and Tony doesn't have any relatives." He paused, "Well, except for some cousin who tried to kill him once, but I don't think they're on speaking terms. So we're the best you've got."  
  
"Yes." Cap said flatly, speaking over him. "We're relatives."  
  
Clint silently prayed that Nurse McCall wouldn't try to refuse them access, because he had a sinking feeling that if she did, the next words out of Cap's mouth would be, "I'm sleeping with him," followed by some speech about equal rights. Cap tended to speechify when he was angry.  
  
She sighed. "You know I shouldn't be doing this, but I get the feeling it will be easier for all of us if I just give in now. If you follow me, I'll take you to them."  
  
"Thank you," Cap said. He sounded as if he meant it.  
  
She started for the elevator, heels clacking loudly on the tile floor. "We've isolated all of the poisoning victims, since the paramedics said they were violent. We've had to restrain several of them."  
  
"But not Jan, right?" The words burst out before Clint could consider them.  
  
"Ms. Van Dyne is still unconscious," Nurse McCall said. "Her vital signs are strong, though. Mr. Stark has regained consciousness, but there are some anomalies..." she trailed off, then looked at Cap. "I don't suppose you know anything about the metal that's lacing his entire skeleton, or why he doesn't have any scarring consistent with the extensive open-heart surgery his medical record lists?"  
  
"Some kind of technological virus called the Extremis rewrote his entire body about six months ago," Cap told her. "And he's got part of his armor stored inside his bones. You said he's awake? Is he okay?"  
  
"That would explain why his name's red-flagged in our medical database as a known superhuman," she said, half to herself. "At least he has bones. The last superhuman we had in here had an exoskeleton."  
  
"But he's awake," Cap repeated.  
  
"Not exactly," she said, frowning slightly. "Maybe you'd better speak to Doctor Brackett. He'll want to hear everything you know about this Extremis, anyway. Ms. Van Dyne's name is flagged in the database, too. Is there anything we should know about her?"  
  
"She can change size at will," Clint said. "She's been treated with Pym particles, plus a couple of other things that let her grow wings and zap people with bio-electric energy when she's small."  
  
"It doesn't affect her physiology when she's normal-sized," Cap said. "What do you mean, 'not exactly awake?'"  
  
"She means, I'm afraid, that your cybernetically enhanced friend is in a catatonic state." A dark-haired man in a white lab coat stepped out of a room a few feet down the hallway. "Thanks, Dixie. I'll take it from here."  
  
"Play nice, Kel," she told him, giving him an amused, through-the-eyelashes look, and okay, somebody was obviously playing "doctor and nurse" outside of hospital hours. "They're relatives. I've got to go check on the other victims." She turned and walked away down the hall. She had very nice legs for a woman in her forties, Clint observed distantly.  
  
Catatonic state. Catatonic state wasn't good.  
  
Cap was staring blankly at the doctor. "He can't be," he said, voice rough. "He was talking before."  
  
"We don't know what this substance he and the others have been exposed to is," Dr. Brackett said gently. "We have no idea what it's currently doing to them, or how it's going to continue affecting them. Our lab is running tests right now, but it's going to be a little while before we have any real answers."  
  
"So, you don't know what's wrong with them, and you don't know what to do about it?" Sam said..  
  
"That's... pretty accurate," the doctor admitted. "Mr. Stark's vital signs are steady, and his pulse is elevated -- all of the victims' pulses are elevated -- and the EEG shows considerable brain activity, which is a good sign under these circumstances. We haven't figured out why he's non-responsive, but it's not unique. Several of the victims are; the ones that aren't trying to stab themselves or the medical staff."  
  
"I want to see him." Cap said. "Then I want to see Jan."  
  
"I understand that, but before we get to that, I'd like your permission to restrain Mr. Stark. Before he became non-responsive, he pulled all of his IV lines and monitor feeds out, and there's still a chance that he might become violent."  
  
Cap's eyebrows went up, his expression obviously horrified.  
  
"You don't want to do that," Clint said quickly. "When people in our profession get tied up, it's usually by someone who wants to kills us."  
  
"We need those monitor lines to stay in place," Dr. Brackett countered. "Two of the victims have already died of heart failure brought on by the stress of whatever this is, and your relative," he stressed the word ever so slightly, "has a history of heart problems."  
  
Cap stared at the doctor, drawing himself up and folding his arms across his chest. "Tony can control electrical equipment with his mind. Think about how much damage he could do if he thought you were attacking him."  
  
Dr. Brackett looked from Clint to Sam. They both nodded at him, and he sighed, shaking his head. "Perfect. Wonderful. We can't sedate him, because God knows how it will interact with whatever he's already been given, and he can screw with medical equipment with his head. Do you have any idea how much sensitive and expensive medical equipment there is in this wing of the hospital alone?"  
  
"I can make sure the monitors stay on, and I can tell you if he's using the Extremis," Cap told him.  
  
"Fine." Dr. Brackett waved a hand toward the room he'd just exited. "I hate New York," he muttered. "I don't suppose there's any way to turn this Extremis thing off?"  
  
"Unfortunately, no." Cap walked past him toward the room. When he reached the doorway, he hesitated, turning to Clint and Sam. "I can handle this. You two go check on Jan. She shouldn't be alone when she wakes up." He said it steadily, as if Jan not waking up wasn't even in the realm of possibility.  
  
"I'll do it," Clint said.  
  
"I'll go downstairs and wait for Hank," Sam said. "Redwing's going to be outside the window," he told Cap. "Just knock on the glass if you need me."  
  
Cap offered him what Clint thought was probably supposed to be a smile. It looked more like a wince. "Thank you, Sam." He turned away, and stepped into Tony's room without looking back.  
  
Clint took a deep breath. "Which room is Jan in?" he asked the doctor.  
  
"That one." Dr. Brackett nodded at the room directly across the hall from Tony's.  
  
Clint nodded. "Right, thanks," he said, steeling himself against whatever might be waiting for him in there.  
  
Jan looked very small and still in the middle of the white hospital bed. There were wires running off her, attached to EKG and EEG machines, and an IV line stuck in her elbow.  
  
Clint stared down at her and felt deeply useless. Yesterday, things had been on their way back to normal, if you ignored the fact that he was supposed to be dead and that Cap had been sulking over Tony not being there to a degree that surpassed even his previous sulking fits, and now Jan and Tony were hurt, and Cap, who was supposed to be the one who held things together in these kinds of situations, was visibly upset, and Wanda had maybe done something to Clint's mind.  
  
The Avengers were the only real family he had. It wasn't fair for things to go this wrong, this quickly.  
  
Jan shifted slightly, moving her head on the pillow.   
  
Clint realized that he was hovering just inside the doorway, and moved to stand beside the bed.  
  
Jan's eyes opened, and then she froze, staring up at Clint with wide eyes.   
  
"It's okay," Clint started, keeping his voice low. The people he'd helped the EMTs load into the ambulances had panicked when you tried to talk to them; it was how he'd gotten stabbed in the thigh. "You're in the hospital. I don't know if you remember, but you were drugged with something. The doctors are going to help you."  
  
"Jan!" Hank burst into the room, white lab coat flapping around his legs. He had obviously come straight from whatever he'd been doing in Avengers Tower without bothering to change his clothes.  
  
Jan screamed, flinching back against the wall at the head of her bed. She drew her legs up and hid her face in her arms, making little whimpering noises, and oh God, what the hell was wrong with her? The other people, the ones Cap would have called "civilians," had been bad enough, but this was  _Jan_. Jan was always in control, always together, always strong. It was one of the things he had always admired about her.  
  
Hank had frozen in the doorway, face gone dead white. He looked sick, like someone who'd been stabbed in the gut and was only just looking down to see the knife sticking out of him.  
  
"You should leave," Clint forced out, moving to place his body between Hank and Jan, trying to block her view of him. Maybe if she couldn't see him anymore, she'd calm down.  
  
"I-" Hank started.  
  
Sam appeared in the doorway behind him, looking grim, and fastened one hand around Hank's bicep. "We'll be in the hall," he said, and tugged Hank backwards out the door.   
  
Hank went obediently, stumbling slightly. He kept staring at Jan until Sam had yanked him out of sight around the doorframe.  
  
"Jan," Clint said. "Jan, it's okay. He's gone, okay? Calm down. Just-- stop doing that." He almost reached out to touch her, but he was afraid that might just make things worse. Normal, rational Jan wasn't this over-emotional, and wasn't afraid of Hank. If Clint touched her, even some place innocuous, like the shoulder or something, he wasn't sure what she might do.  
  
So he hovered, paralyzed, while she took a deep, shaky breath, and slowly uncurled from her protective ball.  
  
"It's okay," Clint repeated.  
  
Jan rolled onto her side, facing away from him, and started crying quietly.  
  
"Can I..." Clint hesitated, "do anything?"  
  
"Just leave me alone," Jan said, her voice muffled.  
  
"I'm not sure-" he started.  
  
"I have wires stuck all over me. If I get worse, they'll know. Go away."  
  
"Right. I'm going." Damn it, he only wanted to help. Why was nothing he did working? Clint turned and limped toward the door, letting his shoulders sag a little. His leg was really starting to hurt now. Today was sucking in every possible way.  
  
When he left the room, Clint found Hank and Sam waiting in the hallway, right outside the door. Hank was sitting on the floor against the wall, hands over his face.  
  
"People were jumping out of windows and screaming and attacking stuff that wasn't there," Sam was saying. "She's not in her right mind right now. This isn't about you."  
  
"Yes," Hank muttered. "Yes it is. You don't know. It is."  
  
Sam shook his head. "Look if you want to help her, go downstairs and help the doctors analyze this thing. You were nominated for a Nobel Prize in biochemistry; this is what Cap put you on the team for."  
  
"Yeah, Man-Mountain, go be useful," Clint said. He'd never expected to feel sorry for Hank, but right now the guy actually hadn't done anything wrong, and if Clint was being fair, Hank had to be just as worried about Jan as he was, maybe more. "We'll call you if anything changes."  
  
Hank nodded, and forced himself to his feet, looking back over his shoulder at the door to Jan's room. Then he left, walking down the hall to the elevator.  
  
Clint watched him go, rubbing absently at the ache in his thigh.  
  
Sam raised his eyebrows. "Didn't Cap tell you to go get stitches for that?"  
  
"Jan might need-" Clint started.  
  
"If she does, Cap or I can call you on your communicator."  
  
Clint hated having his own logic turned against him. "Fine," he said. "But I'm coming right back up as soon as they slap a band-aid on me."  
  
"Cap told you to get a tetanus shot, too."  
  
Clint pulled a face. "Tetanus shots hurt. And I've already had three in the past two years."  
  
"Don't get one, then. When you get lockjaw, it'll be quiet."  
  
Clint couldn't think of any response to that that wasn't more immature than he was willing to be with anyone who wasn't Cap, so he went. Like Sam had said, they'd call him if Jan needed him, or if she and Tony suddenly got worse, or... And anyway, Cap wasn't going to let anything happen to them.


	4. Chapter 4

  
As Steve stepped into Tony's room, he could hear the familiar beeping of a heart monitor -- too fast for someone unconscious, just as Dr. Brackett had said. That had to be a good sign; as long as Tony was awake, he wasn't dying.  
  
"Tony?" he said tentatively. Tony might not have responded to the doctors, but maybe he would react to a familiar voice.  
  
There was no answer, except for a slight increase in the speed of the heart monitor's beeps. Tony was huddled in a ball in the middle of the bed, eyes open, apparently staring blankly into space. Or maybe, Steve thought, his eyes were fixed on something that no one else could see. At least they were blue, no sign of the scrolling computer code or black film that covered them when he was immersed in the Extremis. The hospital's equipment, if nothing else, was safe.  
  
As Steve walked over to the side of the bed, Tony's eyes refocused; he was looking at him, tracking his movement across the room. Thank God, Tony  _was_  awake. He was aware of his surroundings, he just hadn't spoken yet.  
  
"Tony. I'm sorry it took me so long to get here. They wouldn't let me in the ambulance."  
  
Tony didn't say anything. He just kept staring at Steve -- not blankly, not like someone who wasn't really there, but with an odd expression somewhere between sorrow and horror.   
  
Steve sat down in the plastic chair someone had left beside the bed, absently wrapping one hand around the metal railing that formed the side of the bed. "You're lucky I thought to try my old access code for the armor," he said. "I can't believe you didn't change it. I can't believe I didn't think to ask for a new one."  
  
Again, there was no response, and Steve glanced up at the green lines and curves of the EEG read-out, wondering whether Tony was actually seeing him, or if he was looking through Steve, to someone or something else. He had obviously been hallucinating earlier, with his talk about blood and bodies.  
  
Steve closed his eyes for a second, hating this, and hating whoever had released that toxin. Tony was hurting, and there wasn’t anything he could do. He couldn't even be there for him, not really, not if Tony didn't even know he was in the room.  
  
Even during the very worst of Tony's breakdown, when he'd been trying to drink himself to death, Steve had still been able to get through to him, even if he hadn't been able to help. Now...  
  
What if Tony didn't come out of this?  
  
What if he stayed trapped inside his own head, with whatever demons were in there with him, forever?  
  
It wasn't fair; this was his second chance, this was  _their_  second chance. Red Skull was dead, Doom and the Mandarin were defeated, the Registration Act was gone... they were supposed to have the rest of their lives together. What was he going to do if he got everything else in his life back but lost Tony?  
  
They were rebuilding the mansion, rebuilding the team, but if Tony wasn't there to do it with him...  
  
There was a faint thump, and a scratching noise from the window, and Steve looked up to see Redwing landing on the sill. The heavy, sick feeling in his chest lightened just a little; it wasn't much, but it was nice to know that Sam would be there for him if he needed it.  
  
"If you wanted to try and get out of sparring with me," Steve said, trying to make his voice light, and failing miserably, "all you had to do was ask."  
  
Tony kept staring at him, eyes bright with unshed tears, seeing God knew what.  
  
  


***

  
  
  
In Peter's experience, St. Vincent's was generally pretty crowded, being a big hospital in a major metropolitan area, but it wasn't usually this crowded. From the moment that he, MJ, and Aunt May had shown up for Aunt May's one o' clock physical therapy appointment, he'd known that something was wrong.  
  
At first, he'd thought it was maybe a fire, or a major traffic accident, one of those things where four cars and a greyhound bus all pile up on each other. Then the guy behind the reception desk checked Aunt May's name against the appointment list, then looked up and said, "Parker? Hey, are you that Peter Parker Spiderman guy? How come you're not with the other costume people?"  
  
Peter still hadn't gotten used to people doing this -- every time he got a, "Hey, aren't you Spiderman?" comment, he felt this automatic impulse to freeze, look around to see if anybody had heard, and maybe climb out the window or hide behind somebody. A little, paranoid part of him nervously expected receptionist-guy to call the cops on him, or turn out to be the Shocker in a cunning hospital-worker disguise.  
  
"What other costumed people?" MJ asked, while Peter was still getting over being frozen.  
  
"Captain America and the Avengers brought in people from some mass poisoning on Wall Street." Receptionist guy grinned, rolling his chair back a foot or so and putting his hands behind his head. "Do you know he's, like, seven feet tall?"  
  
"Actually, he's six foot two," MJ told him. "I used to play pool with him. Luke Cage is a lot taller."  
  
"That sounds dreadful," Aunt May said. "Were many people killed?"  
  
"Naw." He wrinkled his nose. "It's some kind of drug, not something lethal. Hey, they brought that rich businessman guy in. Wall Street, you know?"  
  
"Norman Osborn?" Peter guessed hopefully. Fate was never that ironically kind to him, but a guy could dream.  
  
"No, the one who gives all that money to the Avengers."  
  
And the old Spidey luck was working true to form. He might still be mad at Tony, but that didn't mean he wanted him to be poisoned.  
  
"You used to play pool with Captain America? For real? What does he look like under the costume. I bet he's hot, right?"  
  
"Like you wouldn't believe," MJ said. Peter couldn't even feel jealous, because even as a straight guy, he could admit that it was true. Cap looked kind of like one of those statues of Greek gods from the Met, if you painted it with an American flag.  
  
"I should," Peter started, "I mean, um..." He wasn't an Avenger anymore, but Cap, Tony, and the others had been his teammates for a while there.  
  
"Why don't you go see how Steven and the others are doing," Aunt May said, cutting him off before he could stammer something else inarticulate. She frowned. "Somebody should call Edwin and tell him what's going on. They're not going to think of it. Mary Jane, would you? I need to get to my appointment, and they won't let you use cell phones in here."  
  
"It screws up the equipment," Receptionist Guy said helpfully.  
  
"I'll go back out to the lobby," MJ said, reaching into her purse and pulling out her cell phone.  
  
"Right," Peter said. "I'll, um, come find you guys after I see them."  
  
As he left, he could hear the receptionist saying to Aunt May, "So, is he really Spiderman? I thought he'd be bigger. Oh, and what's it like being Spiderman's mom?"  
  
There were times when Peter thought he'd almost be willing to sell his soul to get his secret identity back. For one thing, the New York State school board had decided that, as a superhero, his schedule was just too "unreliable" to consider re-hiring him. It was a good thing Ben Urich had apparently blackmailed Jameson into offering him his old job back, even if J.J. did insist on calling him "Spiderman" instead of "Parker" and lecturing him on how his deceitfulness and lies were "everything that was wrong with the youth of America" every time Peter entered his office. Without the  _Bugle_  job, things would be getting pretty desperate right about now. As it was, he'd started to catch himself looking back wistfully at the old days when Jameson had lectured him on how his laziness and unreliability were everything that was wrong with the youth of America.  
  
Jameson would still be blissfully unaware of Spiderman's identity if it weren't for Tony Stark. That didn't mean Peter wanted him to die, though. The receptionist had said that whatever he'd been exposed to wasn't lethal, but he wasn't a doctor -- he was just some guy in a rolley chair with stupid, gelled-and-spiked hair, who was in charge of making people fill out insurance paperwork.  
  
The main nurses' station was nearly deserted, probably because of all the poisoned people, but he managed to catch a blonde woman with a clipboard just as she was leaving. "Excuse me, ma'am, could you tell me where Tony Stark and the other Avengers are?"  
  
She looked at him with raised eyebrows. "Don't tell me," she said. "You're a relative, too."  
  
"Um, no," Peter admitted. Tony had relatives? She must be talking about Cap. "I'm," he leaned forward, lowering his voice to a near whisper, "I'm Peter Parker, I'm, um," God, this never got easier, "I'm Spiderman. I used to be an Avenger?"  
  
"You have a camera around your neck," she said dryly, leaving unspoken the assumption that he was therefore a nosey reporter trying to get pictures of Tony Stark in a hospital bed for the front page of the _Daily Bugle_.  
  
"Well, yeah," Peter said, "I'm a photographer. When I'm, you know, not wearing spandex."   
  
She gave him a long, level look. Peter glanced around warily, making sure everyone in the vicinity was looking the other way, then held out his right hand and sent a thin strand of webbing at the corner of her clipboard.  
  
"Well, I guess you are Spiderman," she said, eyes widening for a second, before her expression eased into amusement. "Second floor, left wing, room 37a. Do you wear some kind of device that lets you do that, or is it organic?" she asked, tugging at the strand of webbing that was now attached to the corner of her clipboard.  
  
"I used to have these web-shooter thingies I wore. Now it's organic. Here, I'll get that," he added, as he watched her tug futilely at the webbing. He reached out and grabbed the corner of the clipboard in one hand, and jerked the webbing loose with the other. He'd used the non-sticky kind, so it came loose after a couple of hard yanks -- one of the benefits of the organic web-shooters was that he could control the consistency of the webbing without changing cartridges. "Sorry about that," Peter said, shoving the webbing into the pocket of his jeans. "Thanks."  
  
Cap was sitting in a chair next to the hospital bed, head bowed, one hand wrapped around the bed's metal railing. Tony was a motionless ball in the bed, which, yeah. That wasn't good.  
  
"Is now a bad time? Because I can come back later," Peter said. Maybe he should have knocked.  
  
"Peter?" Cap didn't look up or take his eyes off Tony. "What are you doing here?"  
  
"Aunt May has physical therapy on Thursdays. The guy at the desk in the rolley chair said you guys were here. What happened?"  
  
"A.I.M. released some kind of drug or poison -- we don't know what yet -- into the ventilation system at the restaurant where Tony and Jan were having lunch." Cap's voice was matter-of-fact; he didn’t sound angry or upset like Peter had expected, just kind of grim.  
  
"Was it some kind of society function thing?" A.I.M. went through brief periods of pseudo-Marxist anti-capitalism in between their longer spells of pure anarchy. Peter had never been able to work out exactly when and why their ideologies shifted back and forth; he thought it might have something to do with the phase of the moon.  
  
"No," Cap said. "Just a restaurant. They were meeting with a reporter. I think it was just bad luck."  
  
"Is it just me, or is that the only kind we get?"  
  
Cap shook his head. "I've had good luck recently, until today." He reached out with the hand that wasn't holding onto the bed and took Tony's wrist.   
  
Tony went stiff, and the beeping from the heart monitor picked up a little.  
  
Cap let go and slowly withdrew his hand, looking miserable. He reached back and rubbed the edge of his shield, sighing. Peter wondered if Cap was even aware of that particular nervous habit; he was pretty sure he was the only one who had noticed it.   
  
Peter scuffed the toe of one shoe on the floor, trying to avoid looking at Tony; something about the way he was just lying there was just creepy. "The guy at the reception desk said it wasn't lethal. So he and the Wasp should be okay, right?"  
  
Cap closed his eyes for a moment, then, "Hank doesn't know what it is yet, and the hospital doesn't know how to treat it. Two of the other victims have already died of heart attacks, and four of them are in comas. And he won't talk to me." His voice got softer, face twisting for a second. "I don't think he knows I'm here."  
  
Oh, God, what was he supposed to say? He'd never been all that good at comforting people or other things which required tact, and this was  _Cap_ , who was always confident and in control. He'd been confident and in control two days after coming back from the dead. In his shoes, Peter would have still been freaking out and checking every hour to make sure he wasn't growing extra arms, which was what _he'd_  been doing two days after coming back from the dead.  
  
Cap looked back up at Peter, and tried to smile for a second. He didn't succeed very well. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to burden you with all of this."  
  
"No, no, it's great. I mean, it's okay," Peter managed. "I know if it was MJ in here I'd be a complete wreck." He edged closer to the bed, really looking at Tony for the first time. He was staring at Steve as if hypnotized, eyes wide and horrified. "What did this thing do to him?"  
  
"It makes people hallucinate," Cap said. "Things so bad that they started stabbing each other with silverware and jumping out tenth storey windows to get away."  
  
Peter crouched down in front of Tony, trying to get a closer look. Tony's pupils were all dilated, but his eyes were tracking; as Peter moved into his field of vision, he blinked, eyes refocusing.  
  
"Peter?" his voice sounded distant, weird. "You shouldn't be here. You need to leave, before you get hurt, too."  
  
"Tony?" Cap's voice was raw with relief. "Do you know where you are?"  
  
Tony kept staring at Peter. "You need to leave," he repeated, voice hoarse and desperate.  
  
"I'm not going to get hurt," Peter said, feeling terribly out of place here, with Tony looking at him that way. Tony wasn't supposed to be concerned for him like that anymore. "We're in the hospital. You're the one that got hurt. And anyway," he added, "Aunt May's appointment downstairs is going to last at least another hour." He was babbling, and he knew it, but he couldn't think of anything intelligent to say. "I mean, I thought Cap wanted us all to try and reconcile and get along, and you kicking me out isn't exactly-"  
  
"Peter," Tony said matter-of-factly, "go away and leave me here with the ghosts before you end up as one of them."  
  
Peter recognized that voice; it was the "shut up and get in the Quinjet" voice. And that was just so many different shades of disturbing that he didn't even have names for them all.  
  
Ghosts, he thought, and the way Tony didn't want Cap to touch him, and he wouldn't talk to him, and the way he had been staring at him...  
  
"I think he thinks you're still dead," Peter blurted out.  
  
"He was hallucinating earlier," Cap said, very softly. "When I got up there, he said-" he broke off, suddenly pale, and closed his eyes again. "Not still. He thinks I'm dead again. He said 'repulsor burns don't bleed.' He thinks I'm dead and that he killed me."  
  
"Oh," Peter said, softly. That was... he remembered the sharp jerk at the end of his webline as Gwen stopped falling, remembered Harry lying on a gurney as the Goblin serum in his system degraded into poison. "That must be horrible. I hope he comes out of it soon."  
  
Tony closed his eyes. "Peter," his voice a rough whisper, "why are you still here? You need to-"  
  
"I should probably leave," Peter said, before Tony could finish. "I... do you think Dr. Pym could use a lab assistant? I did major in chemistry."  
  
Cap put one hand on his shoulder. "Thank you."  
  
"No problem," Peter said, and went to find the hospital's lab. MJ and Aunt May would understand when he was late.  
  
  


***

  
  
  
The emergency room was a little less crowded than when Clint had first come in -- the car crash victims had been seen to, and several of the people with the flu were gone, too. They'd probably taken one look at the huge crowd of potential poisoning victims and given up and gone home.  
  
Clint leaned against the wall, pressing one hand to the puncture wound on his leg. It wasn't really bleeding anymore, but it hurt, and as soon s people started poking at it, it was going to hurt more. Cap and the Falcon had told him to come down here, Clint reasoned. They hadn't actually told him to go over to the nurse's station and fill out paperwork. So he wasn't actually ignoring Cap's orders by just standing here. Plus, once he actually got someone to look at him, he would have to explain to people exactly how he'd been injured -- "You see, doc, first she stabbed me in the arm with a fork, and then she grabbed one of my own arrows and stabbed me in the leg" -- and having to admit to that was just all kinds of lame.  
  
Clint had been standing there for a couple of minutes when the nurse from before, the good-looking, blonde one, materialized next to him.  
  
"Ah," she said. "One of Mr. Stark's 'relatives.'" Clint could actually hear the quotation marks around the word 'relatives.' "Come along, Mr. Hawkeye." She gestured with her clipboard for him to precede her. "Why don't we get you seen to?"  
  
Clint obediently let her usher him to an exam table. "So," he said. "Do I get to have the hot, blonde nurse stitch me up, or do I have to settle for a grumpy doctor?"  
  
"You'll have to settle for a grumpy doctor," she said dryly. "If it helps, the doctor I'm thinking of inflicting on you is also blond."  
  
"Really, I think I just need a band-aid," Clint started. "The bleeding's stopped, and-"  
  
Nurse McCall gave him a level look. "It's a puncture wound. At the very least, you'll need to have it disinfected, if not stitched up. And you really ought to get a tetanus shot."  
  
"I've had three in the past two years," Clint protested.  
  
Nurse McCall ignored him, ducking around the exam curtain and calling out, "Don? Kel's busy. If you were serious about wanting to help out, you can come take care of this guy for me. He needs wound irrigation and stitches."  
  
Why was everyone so intent on jabbing sharp things into him today? Silverware, shots, needles... and wound irrigation sounded both disgusting and unpleasant.  
  
What was happening to Jan and Tony while he was stuck down here? Sam had promised to call him if anything happened, but what if something happened so quickly that they didn't have time to call him? What if something happened that was serious enough that Cap didn't think of it?  
  
It was just wrong to see Jan like this. Jan was never the one who fell apart, except for that one time with Hank, and that had had an obvious reason they could do something about. Tony, too. Tony was all about control, even when he lost it -- maybe especially then. Carol had mentioned how screwed up he'd been while Cap was gone. Everyone had mentioned it. Clint hadn't been there for that, but he'd seen Tony out of control before, and it wasn't scary like this.  
  
Clint heard the rustling sound of the plastic curtain being shoved aside, followed by a pained groan. He looked up and found himself staring at a familiar set of flat, Scandinavian cheekbones, set in a face that would have been pretty if it weren't for the flattened nose, which had to have been broken at least once, and the thin lips. Granted, he was more used to seeing that face towering above him and twice as broad, and there was usually a winged helmet above it instead of an ugly, shapeless hat, but there was still no mistaking exactly who was currently starring at him with a distinctly deer in the headlights look.  
  
"Thor! You're alive!"  
  
Clint jumped up, pain jolting through his thigh as he put more weight on his leg than he'd meant to, and flung both arms around Don Blake.  
  
Don went stiff. Clint didn't let go, babbling, "Oh my God, I can't believe you're back, Big Guy! When did you come back? Why didn't you tell us?" he demanded, cheerfully ignoring the hypocrisy.  
  
"I have a very large stick. Let go of me, or I  _will_  hit you with it."  
  
"You need to come upstairs! Nobody's going to believe this!" Though, given that he and Steve had already come back from the dead... "Or maybe they will."  
  
"Could you please let go of me? And sit down. I need to look at your leg."  
  
"Oh. Sorry." Clint let go of Don and hopped awkwardly back up onto the table. "I'm not going to have to take my pants off for this, am I?"  
  
Don raised his eyebrows. "You've got a bloody hole in your leg. What do you think?"  
  
Clint sighed. "Damn. I was afraid of that."  
  
Leather was very practical for a superhero costume -- it looked good, and it offered more protection than spandex -- but it was also a bitch to get off when it was tacky with half-dried blood. Thank god his pants weren't as tight as Cap's, or getting them off would really have been not fun.  
  
Don poked at the puncture wound on the outside of Clint's thigh, cleaning the dried blood off with an alcohol swab. "This was made by one of your arrows, wasn't it?"  
  
"Yeah." He might as well get the humiliation over with quickly. "And the one in my arm was from a fork."  
  
"What happened?"   
  
"A crazy woman stabbed me with a salad fork." Clint flinched as Don started dripping some kind of clear fluid that burned like hell into the arrow-wound. "Then, after I took the fork away from her, she grabbed one of my arrows and stabbed me with that. Of course, that was after she'd already stabbed the Falcon, so at least I'm not the only one who looks really lame." Now that he thought of it, why wasn't  _Sam_  down here getting a tetanus shot?  
  
"Let me guess. One of the poisoning victims?"  
  
"You know, we really could have used you. There were people jumping out windows left and right." It was only a slight exaggeration. If there had been a time for Thor to make a big, dramatic return, flying right into the middle of the whole mess and catching some crazy sonuvabitch who'd just flung himself out the window would have been it. Instead, here was Don Blake, lurking in St. Vincent's emergency clinic. Clint frowned. "Why are you here?"  
  
"I..." Don looked awkward for a moment, frowning down at the curved needle in his right hand as if he was hoping it would answer for him. Awkwardness was not something Clint had ever previously associated with him. "I was in town on family business, and I heard about the mass poisoning. I used to work here, once upon a time, so I thought I should come here and help out."  
  
"No," Clint corrected, "why are you  _here_  and not at the Avengers Tower telling us you're back? Say, about... when did you come back, anyway?"  
  
That got him a long, flat look. "Because no one is going to force me to follow some stupid human law and 'register.'" The air pressure in the room dropped palpably.  
  
Clint blinked at Don. "You know that's all been over for more than a month? We've all kissed and made up, some of us more literally than others."  
  
"Iron Man and Yellowjacket built an evil clone of me and used it to kill people."  
  
"Creepy evil government people made them do it." Clint waved a dismissive hand. Sure, he'd been pretty mad about the whole thing too, but it was over now, and the way he figured it, it wasn’t exactly surprising that the mad scientists followed their natural inclinations when left to be supervised by the kind of government official who thought that selling out to the Nazis was a good idea. "Seriously, where have you been for the last month? Creepy evil government people were behind the whole thing."  
  
"Oklahoma."  
  
"You should really go upstairs and tell Cap you're here. Things are..." his memory offered him a vivid image of Jan huddled in bed, tears streaking her face "not good. And ow, do you really have to do that so hard?"  
  
"I'd say that it wouldn’t hurt so much if you held still, but it would be a lie."  
  
"What have you been doing in Oklahoma?" Clint had been to Oklahoma. There was nothing there to write home about.  
  
"I had some..." Don hesitated, "family business to take care of. I still do."  
  
Family business. He'd said that twice now. All of the other Asgardians had been killed in the Ragnarok, Clint had heard, and Don Blake, while he'd always been a little bit more than just Thor in mortal disguise, had been created by magic or something, and didn't have a human family. Maybe the other Asgardians had come back from the dead, too? Clint tried not to twitch as Don shoved the giant needle -- which felt much bigger than it looked, they always did -- into his thigh again. The local anesthetic wasn't working; they never did.  
  
"You have family here, too," Clint said. Mildly, because he wasn't the one holding the needle. "Some of them are upstairs in hospital beds."  
  
That won him a visible wince. "How bad is it?"  
  
"It's," going to be okay, he wanted to say, because it wouldn't be fair if Jan and Tony didn't get better when Clint finally had some of his family back, but Clint had known since he was twelve that life was never fair, "bad. Sam left Redwing outside the window to spy on Cap because he's worried something might happen while he's in there alone." There were occasionally perks to having a feathered sidekick to spy for you -- Sam didn't have to sit around metaphorically biting his nails and wondering what was happening.  
  
"What happened to him?" Don went still, lips thinning out further. "Is he-"  
  
He didn't actually say "dying again," but Clint could fill in the blanks. "Cap's not hurt," he said, shaking his head. "Just-- Jan and Tony were there when all of it went down, and they were both affected. Jan... she's awake, but she's really messed up. Tony's in some kind of coma."  
  
Don's expression went flat. "Oh."  
  
"Of course, you wouldn't be in any way concerned about whether the people you're not talking to are going to be okay."  
  
Don's eyes narrowed, and for a moment, Clint could smell ozone. "Watch your tone, Hawkeye."  
  
"Steve wasn't involved in cloning you," Clint went on, knowing he was pushing it, but when didn't he push it? If it weren't for blind chance, Don probably would have walked right out of the hospital without letting any of them know he was there. "Hank screwed up big-time, so did Tony, but how many of us haven't?" He'd already had this conversation with Carol, but he felt it bore repeating. "You guys gave me a second shot, well, Cap did." And hopefully he'd give Clint a third shot when Clint told him about Wanda. Eventually. There were more immediate things to worry about right now. "Come on, if I just walk up there by myself and tell everyone you're back, they won't believe me." He paused. "Well, actually, they probably will. But that's not the point."  
  
Don finished tying the last of Clint's stitches off and snipped off the extra surgical thread. "You do have a point, but I'm not ready to deal with them yet. Half of me wants to beat Tony to death, and the other half's inclined to just stand back and watch. And I don't think now would be a good time for that."  
  
"Probably not," Clint admitted, poking tentatively at his leg. It actually did hurt less now that it wasn't pulling open whenever he moved.  
  
"Your arm doesn't need stitches, but I'd recommend a tetanus shot."  
  
"I had one last-" Clint started. Don gave him a look. He could be almost as intimidating in this form as he could when he was Thor. "Right. Tetanus shot."  
  
Don shrugged uncomfortably, reaching up to adjust his hat, which didn't fit. "I'd appreciate it if you kept this quiet. There are still things I need to take care of, and I need some time."  
  
“You need to get your head together. Got it. I kind of did the same thing for a while.” Clint could relate to that. He still had only hazy memories of those first few weeks after coming back. "That hat's too big for you," he added.  
  
"I'll grow into it," Don said defensively, tugging at the brim again and turning to leave.  
  
"You do realize it makes you look like Gilligan?" Clint called after him.  
  
Don turned back for a moment, looking at Clint over his shoulder. "You never saw me."  
  
"Fine, whatever. See you around," Clint said, getting to his feet more carefully this time.  
  
Don limped off down the hallway. Between the cane and stupid hat, it vaguely reminded Clint of something, but he wasn't sure what.  
  



	5. Chapter 5

  
"And then I told Clint that he was just jealous because he was still single, and he said that if he wanted to, he could get a woman more easily than I could."  
  
Tony didn't respond, as he hadn't responded to anything Steve had said over the past half hour. Steve had been talking since Peter left, telling Tony what had happened while he had been in DC. He wasn't sure if it was doing any good, but he could tell from the rhythm of the heart monitor that Tony could hear him -- it changed when Steve fell silent. At least it was a reaction.  
  
"And did you know Pepper is afraid that I don't have enough experience for you?" Steve went on, trying to sound normal, as if this were a real conversation. "I wasn't about to say anything to her, but, well..." Steve trailed off. He was fairly sure he had managed to make up for any lack of experience in other areas. Tony certainly hadn't had any complaints. And then there was time that he had accidentally cracked the bed frame...  
  
"She said she'd kill me if I hurt you," Steve finished quietly. He might not be responsible for any of this, but that didn't change the fact that Tony was very definitely hurt. What was taking Hank and Peter so long? At this rate, the effects of the drug might wear off before they came up with an antidote. And they would wear off, or Hank and Peter would come through with the antidote; Steve refused to contemplate any other options.  
  
There was a tentative knock on the door. Steve glanced up, and found Carol and Rhodey hovering in the doorway. Carol was still in her Ms. Marvel costume, but Rhodey had lost the War Machine armor. The hospital personnel probably frowned on visitors who wore shoulder canons.  
  
"Have they figured out what this is yet?" Carol asked, taking a short step into the room.  
  
"No," Steve said, staring down at his hands. He was still wearing his gloves, and in the bright fluorescent hospital lights, he could see shiny spots across the knuckles and palm where the leather was starting to wear. "Hank's working on it. Spiderman's here; he's helping him."  
  
"It's a good thing you got the armor off when you did," Rhodey said. He was still in the doorway, looking mildly uncomfortable. "The way some of those people were losing it... There was a kid with cybernetic enhancements at Camp Hammond who was exposed to something similar. She accidentally blasted another student and killed him." He grimaced. "That would have killed Tony."  
  
Steve flinched, his eyes returning to Tony's haunted face. Even though Tony hadn't hurt anyone, Steve was pretty sure he thought he had, and that was what mattered right now. "Tony doesn't handle guilt well," Steve admitted. He didn't handle things that weren't under his control well, either, which was probably connected. If Tony felt guilt over something, punished himself for it, made it his fault, then it meant that whatever it was had been caused by his own actions or failures, and was therefore still under his control.  
  
He'd sworn once that he wasn't going to lose Tony again, not to the Mandarin or some other villain, and not to the inside of his own head. But now, Steve was helpless to do anything to stop that, not when he wasn't even sure Tony could hear him.  
  
Carol shook her head. "You can say that again." She paused and looked at Tony, head cocked to one side. "Can he hear us?"  
  
Steve sighed. "I don't know. He's awake, and he spoke to Peter before, but I don't know that he's really hearing anything we're saying."  
  
Rhodey frowned. He wasn't making any move to come further into the room, as if he felt he didn't have any place intruding. "I'm so tired of doing this," he muttered.  
  
"You don't have to stay," Steve said, more abruptly than he'd meant to. "I don't think it will do any good. I'm not sure  _I'm_  doing any good."  
  
"At least he didn't do this one on purpose. Not that it will matter much in the long run." Rhodey shrugged one shoulder. "I should... someone should go handle the media. One of the nurses was doing a good job of it when I came in, but I'm sure she's got better things to do."  
  
Carol half-raised one hand. "I'll do it. Why don't you find the labs and check on Hank and Spiderman?"  
  
"You sure?"  
  
"I'm a published novelist, and I've spent the past month leading a superhero team in LA. Trust me, if there's one thing I've got experience with, it's talking to the press."  
  
The press. Steve resisted the impulse to groan, rubbing at his forehead. The media had been kind to them in the wake of the incident with the venom clones, the Avengers' first major fight as a re-unified team. They were not going to be kind about this. The prospect of wealthy businessman Tony Stark and almost as wealthy fashion designer and heiress Janet Van Dyne hospitalized and possibly crazy was too good a story not to have reporters fasten themselves on it like leeches.  
  
The one thing that could make this worse for Tony when he woke up -- and he going to wake up, he was -- would be having pictures of it plastered all over the front page of the  _Daily Bugle_.  
  
Rhodey hesitated for a second, glancing at Tony, an unreadable expression on his face. Then he left.  
  
Carol dropped into the room's sole remaining chair, stretching her long legs out in front of her, bootheels scrapping slightly on the scuffed linoleum. "Don't worry," she said. "Tony's gone through this kind of thing before. I'm sure he'll be fine."  
  
Tony's eyes remained fixed on Steve, not even glancing at Carol despite the fact that she had just sat down next to him. It was starting to get more than a little disconcerting; Tony wouldn't talk to him, but neither would he take his eyes off him. Weeks ago, after they'd gotten back from Washington, Tony had admitted that when he woke up alone, he had trouble believing that anything that had happened over the past months -- their relationship, Steve coming back -- was real.   
  
"I mean, he got over the drinking on his own, which is more than I managed, and he survived that mess with the Extremis. And if trying to run SHIELD didn't do him in, then nothing can."   
  
Tony hadn't stopped drinking until he was on the verge of killing himself, had actually  _wanted_  to kill himself then, which really wasn't a comforting thought at the moment.  
  
"I'm not helping, am I?" Carol asked. She sighed. "This sounds awful under the circumstances, but it's been nice being back in New York. The LAPD isn't really sure how to deal with superheroes, and all those riots didn't help. Plus, half the people on the street see superheroes and SHIELD as some sort of auxiliary to the cops after all that riot control Jen and Ares did, so they're not disposed to look on us kindly."  
  
Steve made a humming noise to indicate that he was listening, though probably not more than half of what Carol was saying was penetrating. Most of his attention was entirely taken up by Tony. A piece of hair had fallen over Tony's forehead. Steve curled his right hand around the metal bar on the side of the bed, to keep himself from reaching out and brushing it back. It might make him feel better, but he wasn't sure how it would affect Tony.  
  
"I'm working on a sequel to my book," Carol went on. "I was hoping to show some of it to Tony; he likes science fiction."  
  
"He still hasn't let me see the other three Star Wars movies," Steve said absently. The New Avengers had argued about that once, Tony and Peter insisting repeatedly that there were only three real Star Wars movies, and watching any of the others would be sacrilege.  
  
"Clint wants me to kill the Marcus character off in a really bloody way. You know, he's got something he needs to talk to you about, and you should probably go easy on him when he tells you."  
  
"What?" He was supposed to talk to someone? Steve looked up at Carol, dragging his eyes away from Tony with an almost physical effort. "Who?"  
  
"Clint," Carol said patiently. "When he brought me in from the airport, we were talking about my book, and mistakes all of us have made, like me and the jetliner incident, and Clint and Natasha, and that time Rhodey beat Tony up, and he told me a little about what he was doing right after he came back from the dead."  
  
"That time Rhodey did what?" The surge of protective anger Steve felt probably had more to do with the fact that Tony was currently in a hospital bed than anything else, and finding Hank's temporary lab in order to punch Rhodey a few times wouldn't help anything. It might make him feel better, but it wouldn't help Tony or do anything to the AIM operatives who were really the people that Steve wanted to pound into oblivion.  
  
"It was ages ago, and they're apparently both over it." Carol waved a hand dismissively. "Look, Clint found out a few things before he met up with us in DC, and you really need to ask him about them."  
  
"What's this about Rhodey beating Tony up?" Steve repeated. "I've never heard about it." Tony's friendship with Rhodey had occasionally been strained, especially recently, and Steve had never really understood why. He'd assumed, after overhearing Tony come out to him last month, that it was because Rhodey was straight and Tony obviously wasn't. If Rhodey had taken a swing at Tony over it... And he was angry with AIM, he reminded himself, not Rhodey. Tony was a grown man and could take care of himself in a fight. He'd proved that today -- he'd handled himself well in that restaurant even while drugged.  
  
"Ask Tony once he comes out of this," Carol said. "I wasn't there, I just heard about it from Clint." She glanced at Tony, her eyes lingering on him for a long moment, then looked back at Steve. "He is going to come out of this, Steve."  
  
He would, Steve told himself. He had to. For now, he just had to have faith, trust in the fact that Tony was strong enough not to be broken by this. Steve sighed, and let his shoulders sag. He barely even noticed when Carol left the room.  
  
He'd never even told Tony that he loved him.  
  
  


***

  
  
  
St. Vincent's lab facilities were not as nice as the Avengers' lab. At least they had an entire section to themselves, since Hank had scared all of the hospital employees away. Peter was currently performing what was probably the fifth test of their unknown toxin with St. Vincent's gas chromatograph, while Hank examined yet another blood sample.  
  
"It massively stimulates adrenaline production," Hank was saying, "There's a whole cocktail of endocrine and hormonal chemicals in this thing. The symptoms are familiar, but I don't-- whatever AIM's done with it, it's so complicated that I can't place it. I hate being so damned useless!"  
  
"If it helps," Peter offered, squinting at his new print-out of test results, "one of the ingredients is some kind of benzilate."  
  
"3-quinuclidinyl benzilate!" Hank snapped his fingers. "I'm stupid. Tachycardia, hallucinations, increased temperature... this is some kind of modified derivative of BZ."  
  
"Which is what, exactly?" On the one hand, it was very flattering and affirming that Hank and Reed had followed Tony's lead and treated Peter like an equal in all matters scientific. On the other hand, it meant he ended up asking more questions than he had since Dr. Connors' class.  
  
"It's a chemical compound the Army used during Vietnam."  
  
"Ah." Peter nodded sagely. "And like all things the government produced during Vietnam, it's evil and poisonous."  
  
"It's evil and poisonous and has an antidote," Hank crowed. "Of course," his face fell almost immediately, "I don't know how physostigmine will interact with the other elements in this."  
  
"I have a list of them." Peter held up print-out number five.  
  
"Good," Hank pointed at the nearest computer terminal. "Pull up the medical database and start cross-checking them to make sure none of them are contraindicted against physostigmine."  
  
"How do you spell that?" Peter asked, but he was already typing, pulling up the search interface.  
  
"You guys got something?" a tall, muscular black guy edged around the file cabinet that divided Hank and Peter's section of the lab from the hiding doctors and labs techs. His voice was vaguely familiar, and Peter had a hazy memory of seeing him in a suit, talking to Tony, during the Registration hearings.  
  
"It's some kind of Vietnam, chemical warfare, Agent Orange thing," Peter told him.  
  
Hank ignored the newcomer; he was bent over a computer screen, typing furiously and muttering to himself. "Some kind of pheromone component, that's how they tweaked this to ensure the response would be fear and not something else... Pheromones are good, I can do pheromones, it's no different than talking to ants... Almost instantaneous onset, how did they do that?"  
  
"They probably got it from the Russians; they've got stockpiles of just about any kind of dated chemical weapon you could want." The newcomer shook his head, looking disgusted, then added. "I'm Jim Rhodes, War Machine. Everybody calls me Rhodey. I guess you're Spiderman?"  
  
'Don't say you thought I'd be taller,' Peter begged inwardly. "Yes," he sighed. "I'm Spiderman."  
  
"I thought you'd be older. I mean, damn, you've been in this business longer than I have." It was said with certain amount of respect, which surprised Peter a little.  
  
If Rhodey was War Machine, that meant he was Tony's friend, and was probably a scientist of some kind, so... "Did you come down to help?" Peter asked. Then he turned to Hank. "There's a whole list of things that react badly with physostigmine, but none of the toxin's other components are on it. You'll have to check that none of the victims are on heart medication, though."  
  
Hank swore. "Because it can cause cardiorespiratory complications. I hate my life and I hate my friends."  
  
Rhodey sighed, making a wry face. "I'm not a scientist," he said. "I'm a pilot. I'm just... I passed my limit for seeing Tony hooked up to heart monitors a long time ago."  
  
Peter couldn't really think of anything to say to that. All of the various Avengers and former Avengers he'd been thrown in amongst over the course of the past year had years of history together that he was only peripherally involved in, and often not even really aware of.  
  
"I know why some victims are more strongly affected than others," Hank announced, not looking up from what he was doing. "One of the compounds that causes the endocrine reaction bonds with serotonin in the brain and becomes inert. They can't have meant it to do that; it must be an oversight."  
  
"And in English, that would mean..."  
  
Hank looked up from the computer and blinked at Rhodey, as if just noticing that he was there. "There are chemicals in your brain that keep you from getting sad. They block the poison from working. The more of them you have, the less effective it is. Which is why Tony is a twitching, hallucinating ball and Jan," he looked away, "is at least partially lucid."  
  
"I was wondering about that," Rhodey said. He frowned. "There was this little kid there who stopped crying pretty much as soon as his dad showed up, while other people were still screaming. I'd have thought somebody that little would've been much worse off."  
  
"I can't say for sure, but my guess is that the main worry for small children would be less the psychological effects and more the toxicity; they've got so much less mass, and..." Hank trailed off, suddenly wearing a look Peter knew he'd had on his own face more than a few times. It was the look of a man who'd just been struck by the blindingly obvious.  
  
Hank turned to Rhodey. "Go find Clint. Tell him he needs to get Jan to grow to at least ten feet. Tell him Goliath-sized, he'll know what I mean. She'll increase her mass exponentially, and have a fraction of the amount of the toxin in her system."  
  
"I can do it," Peter volunteered. "I should check in with Aunt May and MJ, anyway. They've got no idea where I've been for the past two hours." He knew they'd understand, but that didn't mean that they weren't worrying, and that he didn't owe them a heads-up.  
  
Hank turned back to his blood samples, and started muttering to himself. Peter guessed that meant he was dismissed.  
  
"I'll keep an eye on things here," Rhodey said as Peter passed him.  
  
"Right," Peter nodded. "Um. Nice to meet you."  
  
Peter managed to make it back upstairs without encountering the slightly intimidating nurse. The hallway was empty now, Hawkeye and the Falcon nowhere in sight. Peter belatedly realized that he had no idea how was he supposed to find Hawkeye. Everyone had been acting as if he were still an Avenger, but he didn't have a communicator anymore, and he wasn't exactly part of the gossip circuit, either. He supposed he could go try and find that duty nurse from before and ask her if she'd seen a guy in a pointy mask and purple leather, but...  
  
Ms. Marvel was coming out of Tony's room. She was staring off into the distance with a worried expression, not seeming to see Peter. She'd been an Avenger for years, Peter thought. She probably knew Jan Van Dyne at least as well as Hawkeye did.  
  
"Ms. Marvel!" Peter said, before she could walk past him.  
  
She turned to him, looking startled for a moment, before her expression smoothed. "Spiderman. Does Hank know anything yet?"  
  
Peter shifted his weight from one foot to the other, feeling awkward. He didn't really feel comfortable speaking for Hank about this, not when Hank's solution was still a work in progress. "Maybe," he said, noncommittally. "He did think of something that we can do now, though. Somebody needs to get the Wasp to grow, because if she doubles her size-"  
  
"She'll be half as poisoned," Ms. Marvel interrupted, smacking her forehead with the palm of her hand. "Why didn't anyone think of that?"  
  
"I didn't even know she could grow." Peter shrugged. "I always thought she just shrunk down and had wings."  
  
"The growing is new. I think Jan forgets about it herself half the time."  
  
"So, can you-" Peter started.  
  
"I'd be glad to," she interrupted. "It’ll be a relief to actually do something. Tony wouldn't even look at me."  
  
"He looked at me," Peter said. "He told me to leave before I died. Then he went back to staring at Cap in a really creepy way." It was disturbing to think of Tony so out of it; in Peter's experience, Tony Stark had always been in control of every situation, or, if not actually in control, trying to be. The only person more together and self-confident was Cap, who was also a wreck right now, and the whole thing was just wrong.  
  
"Right," Ms. Marvel said, looking away. "I'll go deal with Jan." She turned back to Peter for a moment. "Thanks for helping out. You didn't have to."  
  
She vanished into one of the other rooms, which Peter assumed was where the Wasp was being treated.  
  
Okay, message delivered. Now it was time to find MJ and Aunt May, apologize for disappearing on them, and then get back to the lab.  
  
Peter didn't have to go as far as he expected to locate MJ. She was at the nurses' station, arguing with the nurse Peter had talked to earlier. "Look, I promise I'm not a reporter."  
  
"So did the last person claiming to be one of Mr. Stark's relatives, and he had a camera around his neck."  
  
"Cute, brown hair, not very tall?" MJ asked. When the nurse nodded, MJ added, "He's my husband."  
  
"So you're, ah, Mrs. Spiderman?" the nurse raised her eyebrows skeptically.  
  
"Actually, it's Mrs. Watson-Parker," MJ's voice was dry. Then she looked up, her eyes meeting Peter's. "Peter! There you are. Is everyone all right?"  
  
"Um, not exactly, no," he admitted.  
  
"Oh," she frowned. "Speaking of which, where have you been? May and I have been biting our fingernails for the past hour."  
  
"I've been helping Hank Pym look for an antidote. It's some kind of modified Vietnam-era chemical warfare. It makes people hallucinate."  
  
"You mean, like LSD, the walls are melting?"  
  
"No," Peter said, "More like hallucinating that your friends are dead and you killed them." He thought of Gwen again, who would still be alive if it wasn't for him. It wasn't just that his webline had broken her neck -- if it weren't for him, she would never have been anywhere near the top of the Brooklyn Bridge in the first place. The Green Goblin had kidnapped her because she had been Peter's friend. Like the Kingpin's hired assassin shooting Aunt May because she had the bad luck to be related to Spiderman.  
  
MJ's eyes widened slightly, and she took Peter by the arm and pulled him away from the nurses' station, out of earshot. "How bad is it?" she asked, voice low.  
  
"The Wasp is apparently hysterical, and Tony isn't responding to anyone, not even Cap. It's really freaky, MJ. When I went in to see him, he told me to get out before I died, too, but I don't think he actually heard anything I said, and Cap is really scared. He's never scared!" Hank was obviously scared, too, which wasn't as frightening as Cap losing it, but still wasn't exactly reassuring. Peter couldn’t be sure, since there’d been no way he was going to ask, but from the way Cap had been watching Tony with a gaze almost as fixed and unwavering as the one Tony had on him, Peter thought he might be worried that Tony wasn't going to come out of it.  
  
Which was unlikely, since Hank already had an antidote, but the way Tony had been staring at Cap, somehow both horrified and hungry, as if he were both afraid to look at him and afraid to look away... It was just creepy, was all. Tony wasn't exactly one of Peter's favorite people anymore, but he wouldn't wish the kind of suffering he must be undergoing on anyone.  
  
"Of course he's scared," MJ said, that tiny worried, line she sometime got between her eyebrows forming. "He and Tony are... I get the impression they're pretty much married these days."  
  
"I know it's silly," Peter admitted, "but, well... He was actually worried about me. I mean, when he was trying to get me to leave, he sounded really scared, like I was his responsibility or something." Peter gestured expansively, trying to convey the depth of the weirdness this had caused. "Things aren't supposed to be like that anymore." He shook his head and folded his arms across his chest, looking down. "I think I liked it better when I could pretend that I hated him."  
  
"Peter," MJ's voice was sympathetic, but Peter thought he detected a hint of amusement there, too, "you don't hate people."  
  
"I hate the Kingpin," he said. Because he did, he really did, with a kind of dark intensity that was especially scary for the fact that he'd never felt it before. No matter how much he wanted to hate Norman Osborn -- for Gwen's sake, and maybe especially for Harry's sake -- he was and always would Harry's father, and as much of a psychopathic bastard as he was, Harry had loved him, and Peter could never quite bring himself forget that.  
  
"He's not really people," she pointed out.  
  
"No, he's more like five people." Okay, it was a cheap shot, but he was so definitely not above it.  
  
MJ's lips twitched. Then, "Wait a minute," her eyebrows went up. "You're not thinking that Tony got poisoned because you were mad him, are you? The world doesn't revolve around you, Peter."  
  
"I know that," Peter mumbled, "but... I have been mad at him, and he is poisoned, and..." he trailed off, because that sounded exactly as stupid as it was.  
  
"You don't have to forgive him just because he's hurt, either, you know. If you're still mad at him, you're still mad at him."  
  
"Don't let Aunt May hear you say that," Peter cautioned. "It's rude to speak ill of people who are in hospital beds." The thing was, thinking about it, maybe he wasn't as mad as he thought he'd been. Or at the very least, wasn't as angry as he'd been a month ago. He'd never been very good at holding grudges, and now that Registration was mostly gone, he was having trouble holding on to his righteous indignation. With the source of his righteous indignation over and done with, he was finding it harder to come up with reasons to stay mad, he'd found himself resorting to petty things like, "His cat doesn't like me."  
  
Tony had lied to him, manipulated him, but deep down, he had the uncomfortable feeling that he might be secretly grateful for it, at least a little. He hadn't had to make the kind of choices Tony had, and even though he'd deserved the right to make them... he couldn't help but be a little glad that, in the end, he hadn't had to. He hadn't knowingly supported the things SHIELD and the House Unregistered Superhuman Activities Committee had been doing in secret. He'd only had to sell out a little, not sell out all the way, and he certainly hadn't been made to pay for it the way some people had. His family had paid, Aunt May had paid, but it could have been so much worse.  
  
"I think I'm kind of mad at myself, mostly," Peter admitted. "Because, yeah, Tony didn't tell me stuff, but a lot of it was stuff I didn't want to know, stuff I was happier not knowing. And I could probably have found it out sooner if I'd been looking harder. I'm kind of," he hesitated, gesturing vaguely with one hand, "glad I didn't know everything he and Reed knew when I had to pick sides." He swallowed hard, looking away. It all came back to Gwen again; if he had known, while she was falling, that stopping someone at terminal velocity could be as fatal as impact... Knowing that he'd deliberately chosen a course of action that he'd known would kill her -- because either option, catching her or letting her fall, would have killed her, he knew that now -- was the only thing that could have made the guilt worse. "What kind of man does that make me?"  
  
MJ was silent for a moment, regarding him seriously. "No one should have to make those kind of decisions," she said finally. "I'd be worried if you wanted to."  
  
"Maybe I should have," Peter said. "Maybe I was just being a wuss and ignoring my responsibilities. Reed and Tony didn't hesitate."  
  
"And look where that got us." MJ shook her head, frowning. "You know, I may not be a spandex-wearing hero myself, but I'm pretty sure wanting that kind of control is the path to supervillainy."  
  
"Mostly, insanity, unfortunate science experiments, and bad fashion sense are the path to supervillainy, but I know what you mean."  
  
There was a long moment of silence, and then MJ said,  
  
"You said you and Hank Pym found an antidote?"  
  
"A partial one, anyway. He's getting it ready now."  
  
"Good. May and I saw some footage of the building evacuation on the news, and it was pretty gruesome. There were a lot of people in that restaurant."  
  
"Speaking of which, I should get back to the lab." Peter cast a guilty glance over his shoulder in the direction of Hank's commandeered lab facilities. "I don't know how much good I'm doing, but I'd like to think I'm helping some."  
  
"I'll walk you there," MJ said. She slipped one hand around his arm, and fell into step beside him. "Then I'll go tell May where you are."  
  
It was silly, but just like that, Peter felt better prepared to tackle whatever work needed to be done on Hank's antidote. No matter how crazy his life had been lately, at least he still had his family, and as long as he had them, nothing could be that bad.  
  
  


***

  
  
  
People were just coming back from the dead all over the place these days, Clint reflected, grinning to himself. Even if Thor, or, well, Don Blake, was being kind of a jerk about things -- okay, with reason, but still -- it was great that he was back.  
  
Clint had followed Steve's orders down to the letter, and even gotten the stupid tetanus shot, which meant he was free to go back upstairs. As he left the emergency clinic, he passed Sam, who was being ushered toward one of the examination areas by a student nurse.   
  
She was pretty, extremely petite -- especially standing next to Sam's six-foot-plus height -- and was really obviously flirting with Sam. "It was so nice of you to help us handle those two patients," she said, fluttering her eyelashes up at Sam. "Whatever those poor people were drugged with makes them so violent."  
  
Sam looked torn between amusement and deep discomfort. "It was the, um, least I could do," he said.  
  
"Oh, but you should have told us that your arm was hurt." And there went the eyelashes again.  
  
Sam had four tiny punctures on his shoulder, identical to the four tiny punctures on Clint's arm that Don Blake had rolled his eyes at and doused with hydrogen peroxide. "Don't forget to give him a tetanus shot," Clint called after them. "You have to take these sorts of things seriously."  
  
Sam, being more mature than Cap, did not whinily protest this or make faces at Clint.  
  
Clint had planned to go and see Jan again, but when he found himself in the hall outside her room, he couldn't make himself enter. She wasn't going to be any better, and there wasn't anything he could do, and the last time he'd been in there, she had sent him away.  
  
Cap probably needed someone to talk to, anyway, since Sam was downstairs getting his fork-wounds bandaged.  
  
Tony was curled into a ball in the middle of the bed, just like Jan had been. He wasn't crying. He wasn't really doing much of anything.  
  
Cap was sitting by the side of the bed, in one of those uncomfortable hospital chairs, shoulders slumped, and Clint knew right away that things had to be bad, because he didn't even look up when Clint came in.  
  
"I guess he hasn't come out of it yet, huh?" Clint said.  
  
"No," Cap said, sounding tired. "He talked to Peter, but none of it made any sense. He won't talk to me."  
  
Clint tried to think of something comforting to say. "Well, at least we know this stuff isn't poisonous, or not very poisonous, anyway, because if it were, he and Jan would be dead."   
  
Cap didn't look comforted. "Carol said you had something to tell me?" he asked, voice still dull.  
  
There was probably never going to be a good time to utter the phrase, "I slept with Wanda, but I swear it's not my fault. Carol thinks I was mind-controlled; what do you think?" but right now seemed like an especially poor time.  
  
"Thor is back," Clint blurted out.  
  
Cap stared at him blankly. "What?" he said, after a long moment.  
  
"Yeah, he's downstairs playing doctor. Well, being a doctor, I guess. He stitched up my leg."  
  
Cap blinked. " _Thor_  stitched up your leg."  
  
"No, Don Blake did, but I mean, so what? It's the same thing." Clint felt his face flushing. Only about ten minutes ago, he'd been promising Don Blake that he wouldn't tell anyone he'd seen him. But Cap really needed some good news right now, and hey, he didn't look lost and defeated anymore, so clearly Clint had made the right decision.  
  
Cap stood up, taking a single step away from the bed. "Where is he? Is he still down there? Why hasn't he come up?"  
  
And they were back to "Things Clint really didn't want to have to tell Cap right now."  
  
"Because Hank and Tony built an evil, murderous clone of him. I've lost count of the times I've asked what the hell you people were doing while I was dead, but I'm going to say it again." Though cloning Thor wasn't really that far out there for either of them, Hank especially. There were times when Clint suspected that if it weren't for Jan, Hank would have become a mad-scientist-style supervillain years ago.  
  
Cap's eyes narrowed. "You know they weren't given a choice." He sounded defensive, glancing back down at Tony as he spoke.  
  
"Yeah, well Thor doesn't know that. Or Don Blake doesn't, which is the same thing."  
  
"Did you tell him?"  
  
"I don't know if you've forgotten, but Thor isn't very good at listening to people."  
  
"Is he still down there?" Cap glanced at the doorway, indecision plain on his face, then back to where Tony lay motionless, heart hooked up to heart monitors and IV lines.  
  
"He didn't want to see anybody," Clint admitted. "He said he needed a little while to finish getting his head together."  
  
Cap's face fell. "Oh," he said, quietly. "But it was really Don Blake? And he's okay?"  
  
"It was really Don Blake, and he looked fine to me." Clint thought for a moment. "I think he's gotten bitchier, though. I guess being dead changes you."  
  
There was a moment of silence while to two of them looked at each other. Clint didn't feel any different, but then, how could he be sure? Cap didn't seem all that different, either, but a few years ago, he would never have started sleeping with Tony. Or maybe he would have. Clint preferred not to think about it that hard.  
  
"I don't think I've changed," Cap said after a minute.  
  
"Me neither," Clint admitted. "Maybe he's just sulking." He shrugged. Then he turned to look at Tony, really seeing him for the first time. His eyes were open, fixed unwaveringly on Cap, so he had to be at least partially aware of what was going on. Jan had been, and she was a lot smaller than Tony, and hadn't had armor to protect her from the toxin.  
  
"You said he talked to Peter? How come he's not talking now?"  
  
"I don't know. I don't think he really knows what's going on right now."  
  
"He looks bad," Clint agreed. Tony's face was flushed, his hair was sticking to his forehead, and from the expression on his face, whatever he was actually seeing wasn't very nice. "But hey," Clint went on, trying to sound encouraging, "Hank's working on an antidote, and he's almost as good at that kind of thing as he is at creating things that turn out to be evil."  
  
Cap gave him a look that he mentally translated as "Clint, that wasn't very nice." He sighed, looking down at Tony once more; he looked almost afraid, or maybe like he wanted to cry, neither or which were looks Clint was used to seeing on Cap. "I don't know what I'm going to do," he said, voice low.  
  
Clint froze, unsure what to say. Cap always knew what to do, and usually had no problem telling everyone else what  _they_  should do, as well. Maybe this  _was_  a good time to tell him about Wanda; at least it would distract him. To be honest, Clint had expected the news about Thor to distract Cap for more than just a couple of minutes. "I was talking to Carol a couple days ago," he began.  
  
"Right. That." Cap frowned. "What's this about Rhodey hitting Tony?"  
  
And he was saved once more. "It was ages ago, when Tony was on the west coast after the drinking, back when Rhodey was wearing the armor." Hank had been out there too, in his first attempt at hanging up the costume and just being a scientist, and Tigra. And Bobbi. "Tony and Rhodey got into an argument while Rhodey was fighting some supervillain, and Rhodey socked him one. Or anyway, that's what the Witch told me; she's the one who tried to break them up."  
  
"Wait, Rhodes was in the armor?" Cap stood up straighter, making it very obvious that he was four inches taller than Clint, his voice taking on that dangerous note it sometimes got when he was talking to supervillains. "I thought they'd just gotten into a fistfight or something. Why have I never heard about this?"  
  
Clint felt himself automatically standing up straighter, not that it would do much good. "Because by the time I heard about it, the two of them had put it behind them, and you beating Rhodey up wouldn't have done anyone any good." Clint shrugged. "Look, if I'd known about it at the time, I would have kicked him off the team for endangering civilians, but by then he'd already left. I mean, you were a horrible leader, but I did learn that much from you."  
  
"I was not a horrible leader."  
  
"Okay, not horrible. Just annoying." When all else failed, Clint could always make Cap irritated with him. He liked to think of it as a finely honed skill.  
  
"You started it," Cap pointed out, somewhat inaccurately.  
  
"You were older," Clint returned. "You should have been more mature; you should have been above all of that."  
  
"I was twenty-six, and I was trying to lead the team on my own for the first time." He was staring at Tony again, one hand resting on the back of the chair he'd been sitting in when Clint came in. "And you were this obnoxious little punk," Cap went on, turning back to Clint, a sad little smile on his face. He reached down and, without looking, brushed Tony's hair out of his face.  
  
Tony flinched, and closed his eyes, scooting back several inches so that he was sitting up against the back of the bed. "I didn't mean to," he whispered, voice hoarse. "I don't know what happened. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to."  
  
Didn't mean to do what, Clint wondered. As far as he knew, Tony had kept his cool and hadn't hurt anyone at the restaurant. He and Jan both had. Was he apologizing for the Registration mess? That time he'd been mind-controlled by Kang the Conqueror? The time he'd gone crazy and hunted down and attacked everyone who'd stolen his armor technology? The drinking? When it came to Tony, there was a lot to choose from. It was a toss up which was worse; his occasional spectacular losses of control, or his control-freak attempts to fix things afterwards.  
  
"Nothing happened." Steve said it very gently, but the expression on his face was raw. "You didn't do anything."  
  
"I didn't mean to," Tony whispered again, eyes still closed. "I'm sorry. I didn't-"  
  
"Pym's got a cure!" Rhodey came skidding around the doorframe and burst into the room, nearly yelling with enthusiasm and obvious relief. Tony flinched at the noise, and Cap turned to glare viciously at Rhodey.  
  
"Hey, don't shout," Clint hissed. "We're in a hospital. The nurses will eat you." Then the import of Rhodey's words caught up with him. "A cure? That's great!" Jan was going to be okay. And Tony was going to be okay, which meant Cap would be okay.  
  
Cap sat down abruptly, hands over his face. There was a sudden flutter outside the window as Redwing took off, probably to go fetch Sam.  
  
"Oh God," Tony was staring at Rhodey now, that same blank, horrified look on his face. "Not you, too."  
  
Rhodey blinked, looking appropriately creeped out. "I thought he was in some kind of coma."  
  
"You're going to be all right," Cap told Tony, voice rough.  
  
Tony closed his eyes again, sagging back against the bed and reverting to huddled-ball status. "Not without you," he said, the words barely audible.  
  
Cap wrapped one hand around the metal bar that formed the side of Tony's bed, gripping it so tightly that his knuckles turned white. "I'm right here." He said it very quietly, and for the first time, Clint felt as if he were intruding on something. He and Rhodey probably weren't supposed to be hearing this.  
  
Cap reached back and brushed the fingers of his free hand along the edge of his shield. "I'm right here," he repeated.  
  



	6. Chapter 6

  
When Rhodey had announced that Hank had an antidote, Steve had naively expected it to be instantaneous, or at least, hadn't expected it to take this long. Shortly after Rhodey's announcement, a nurse had come in and given Tony a shot. That had been twelve hours, and eleven more injections of the antidote ago, and aside from the fact that Tony was now asleep, nothing had happened.  
  
Visiting hours were long over, and the hospital was filled with an early morning quiet; most of the other Avengers had long since gone home, leaving Steve and Hank to keep watch. A few hours ago, a young, black doctor with a USMC tattoo on his forearm had come in to look Tony over, and had suggested that Steve might also wish to leave. Steve had folded his arms and looked at the man for a long moment, at which he had rolled his eyes, and shook his head, but had left without further protest, and had not returned.  
  
Sam and Clint had been coming by in alternating shifts, probably, Steve acknowledged, as much to keep an eye on himself and Hank as anything else.  
  
Hank had assured them all that this was supposed to happen, that the antidote took time to work, but after twelve hours of watching Tony sleep, Steve wasn't finding that particularly comforting. But then, Hank had less reason to worry.  
  
Jan, now half again as tall, had woken up several times, slightly more lucid each time. The last time, she'd pulled out her various IV and monitor lines, walked out into the hallway where Hank had been pacing nervously back and forth, and hauled him into her room, where she'd then apparently collapsed on him. The hospital staff hadn't been pleased with Jan being ten feet tall in the first place, and had unsurprisingly liked this even less. Steve had come out of Tony's room long enough to tell them to leave Hank and Jan alone, which they then had. He had a feeling the blonde nurse from earlier wouldn't have been so easily cowed, but this was a new shift.  
  
Steve shifted his weight in the now-familiar plastic chair, which hadn't gotten any more comfortable. He'd been briefly dragged away by Sam and Clint in order to eat dinner, but otherwise he hadn't left Tony's side. And Tony hadn't woken up once.  
  
Tony was probably exhausted from his week in DC, Steve told himself. Left to his own devices, he probably hadn't been getting enough sleep. Steve could sympathize; he hadn't slept in over twenty-four hours now, and his eyes felt gritty and tired. He'd expected to be sleeping with Tony again last night.  
  
Steve let his head drop to the side of the bed, onto his folded arms, and let his eyes slide shut. Tony was going to be okay. Tony had to be okay. He just had to keep telling himself that.  
  
Someone was petting his hair, Steve realized muzzily, an indeterminate amount of time later. Sam would mock him if he ever saw this, Clint too, but Steve found that he didn't really care. Tony stroking his hair was inexplicably soothing.  
  
The touch on his hair stopped just as Steve woke up enough to remember where he was and why.  
  
He lifted his head and opened his eyes to find Tony staring at him with wide-eyed trepidation.  
  
"Tony?" Steve said tentatively, already halfway to his feet and reaching for him. And then Tony was grabbing him and pulling him close, back down and halfway onto the bed, clinging to him silently. Which was good, because it gave Steve an excuse to cling back.  
  
  


***

  
  
  
Steve was big and warm and oh, thank God, alive. Tony's face was buried in his shoulder, the edges of Steve's scale-mail digging into his cheek. He was alive, and whatever it felt like, none of it had been real.  
  
He'd thought Steve was dead, known Steve was dead. Known if he tried to touch Steve, he wouldn't be able to. It wasn't that he hadn't known he was hallucinating -- he'd known that. But as surely as he'd known he couldn't trust his own perceptions, he'd known Steve was dead, dead because of him, at his hands. And even if Steve was just another hallucination, that had been better than losing him entirely.  
  
Steve was holding him so tightly that it almost hurt, repeating his name over and over. Tony let himself go limp, sagging against Steve and closing his eyes. What ever had happened, there were almost certainly things that needed to be dealt with, but they could wait; for now Tony couldn’t process anything beyond the fact that Steve was alive, was here, was all right.  
  
"It's all right," Steve was saying, "I've got you." And then, a long moment later, "I was worried you wouldn't wake up."  
  
Steve sounded upset. Tony reached up absently to stroke his hair, and hesitated as he felt a sharp tug on the inside of his arm. He looked down to find an IV line attached to the inside of his elbow.  
  
He was in a hospital, he realized. That made sense. And it would explain why he felt strangely weak and uncoordinated.  
  
He and Jan had been in a restaurant. There had been poison, and a riot.  
  
"How did you get me out of my armor?" he mumbled into Steve's neck.  
  
"I used my old override code." There was a strange note in Steve's voice.  
  
"Oh," Tony said, without much curiosity. He'd been asking more for form's sake than anything else. At the moment, it was hard to care about anything but the fact that Steve was here. He wasn't sure he had the energy for more. Except...  
  
"Is Jan all right?"  
  
"She woke up a little while ago. You're the one that had us worried." Steve's arms tightened slightly around Tony's shoulders. His grip was painfully tight now, but there was no way Tony was going to object.  
  
"Good," he said. "That's good." One of the many fears that had paralyzed him in the restaurant had been the worry that Jan would be killed or hurt. She hadn't had the protection that the armor had afforded him. He frowned into Steve's shoulder, eyes still closed. "There was a reporter..."  
  
"Jan took care of him."  
  
Good. That was good. It was fortunate that Jan had been there; he had been next to useless. "Was anyone else hurt?" he asked, finding that he did, in fact have the energy to worry about things beyond Steve's presence. "Did I-"  
  
"No," Steve voice was firm enough to quell all doubt. "You kept several people from stabbing each other and stopped a few more from jumping out the window. And if you hadn't shut down the ventilation system, things would have been much worse."  
  
Tony didn't answer, just kept his face buried in the crook of Steve's neck and breathed in the scent of leather and heat and sweat.  
  
Some time later, he wasn't sure how long, Steve said, quietly, "I don't know what I would have done if your armor hadn't come off."  
  
"I didn't have a choice," Tony said, feeling mildly defensive. "They were going to hurt each other. Someone had to do something."  
  
"You could have been hurt." Steve let go of Tony, pulling away, and Tony opened his eyes to find Steve watching him seriously. "And we wouldn't have been able to help you. I can't believe I never asked for your new override codes."  
  
"I couldn't leave Jan to handle everything alone," Tony said, trying to smile. Not that there'd been much he could do. The armor was a weapon; it wasn't designed for crowd control. He'd barely been able to use it for fear of hurting the people he was trying to protect. "But hey, you got everyone out, so I guess it doesn't matter."  
  
Steve blinked. "Doesn't matter? Tony, what if you hadn't woken up?"  
  
"What else was I supposed to do?" Tony looked away, inspecting the IV line in his elbow. He tugged at it absently, adding, "I couldn't just let them attack each other. More people would have gotten hurt." Standing by and watching when he could have intervened would have made anything that happened to those people his fault.  
  
Steve grabbed Tony's right hand, fingers firm around his wrist, forcing him to let go of the IV line. "They only let me stay in here because I swore I could make you stop doing that."  
  
"Doing what?" Tony asked, looking back up at Steve.  
  
"Did you even think about the risks?" Steve was asking. "You should have told us you were compromised right away."  
  
He'd been very aware of the risks of donning the armor in a crowded room when he'd already been exposed, but it hadn't occurred to him to say anything to the others -- for one thing, part of him had already been worried that they were dead, but even if that hadn't been the case, he wasn't sure he'd have thought to say anything; after keeping his heart problem a secret for so long, concealing his physical condition was second nature.  
  
Tony shrugged, the IV line tugging at his arm again. What was in it, anyway? "It didn't seem important." In the midst of all the chaos, there hadn't exactly been time to have discussions about his physical or mental condition. It wasn't as if there was anything anyone could have done at that point. The hallucinations hadn't been fun, but the entire time at the restaurant, he'd at least known that they were hallucinations. It wasn't until later, until he'd woken up in the hospital, that he'd lost the ability to sort them out from reality.  
  
"Didn't seem important," Steve repeatedly, slowly, his voice very calm. His jaw tightened. "What if you'd panicked and hurt someone? What if that gas had been poisonous, and there'd only been a limited amount of time to give you an antidote? You passed out inside the armor." His voice increased in volume as he spoke, the facade of calm crumbling until the least few words were almost a shout.  
  
Tony managed to keep from flinching at Steve's anger, but only just. He took a deep breath, eyes focusing on the needle in his elbow, the green lines of the EKG monitor, the fuzzy hospital blanket that was covering his legs -- anywhere but Steve's face. "You had an access code," he pointed out, doing his best to sound reasonable. "And don't tell me you wouldn't have done the exact same thing! You would never sit out a fight, and you know it." People had been going out of their minds; he hadn't had a choice. And it wasn't as if Steve was any better at sitting on the sidelines.  
  
"That's not the point!" Steve snapped. "You-" he broke off, maybe at the look on Tony's face; he had flinched this time.  
  
He was too tired for this right now, shaky, disconnected, still feeling like he’d been put together wrong. Tony flexed his fingers, trying to collect himself. He hated being this weak in front of Steve; everything else aside, Steve didn't like being reminded that he was damaged goods.  
  
Steve drew a deep breath. "I'm not going to argue with you while you're in a hospital bed. We can talk about this later." He stood up, glanced around the room. "I wonder where the doctors are. I would have thought they'd be in here by now."  
  
Tony shrugged, grateful for the change of subject. "I cut the connections to the monitors and inserted an artificial looped datafeed in their place. They think I'm still asleep."  
  
Steve stared at him, looking bemused.  
  
"I didn't want the doctors coming in yet," Tony said, not quite defensively. When he'd first woken up, and stretched out a tentative hand to touch Steve's hair to determine whether he was real, he'd sensed the signals from the monitors and reached out with the Extremis to block them, half-afraid that people were spying on him. He hadn't really registered that they were hospital equipment until Steve had woken up and proven himself very real indeed, and Tony had belatedly noticed the IV in his arm.  
  
Steve shook his head, but Tony thought he saw his lips twitch, just for a second. "I'll go tell them you're awake," he said.  
  
"Get me some clothes, too, would you?"  
  
Steve nodded, but made no move to leave, standing beside Tony's bed, one hand grasping the metal railing that ran along the edge of it, staring down at Tony, something strange and intense in his face.  
  
Tony looked up at him silently. Steve looked tired, with red-rimmed eyes, and unshaven, though the stubble was so blonde that it was barely noticeable. As soon as Tony got dressed and checked himself out, they could both go home and go to sleep.  
  
He'd spent a lot of time recently staring at Steve, drinking in the sight of him. After knowing for so long that he was never going to see Steve again, it was a little bit like coming into the light, every time Tony saw him. Steve alive and breathing wasn't something he was ever going to get tired of looking at.  
  
  


***

  
  
  
Jan knew it was psychosomatic, but being out of a hospital room and back in Avengers Tower made her feel immeasurably better. Wearing real clothes helped, too.  
  
The hospital staff had make token protests when Jan and Tony had checked themselves out several hours after Tony had rejoined the land of the living, but it really had only been a token protest. Jan had a feeling that they'd been happy to see them go, as much because of herself as because of Tony. The nurses hadn't reacted well when Carol had gotten her to increase her size; apparently it had done some very strange things to all of the monitors they had had hooked up to her.  
  
She'd been so irrationally terrified... It had gotten better once she was larger, but it hadn't gone away until several hours after they'd started dosing her with Hank's antidote. After she'd cried all over Clint and thrown a screaming fit at the sight of Hank.  
  
It was horrible of her to think, but she couldn't help but be almost grateful that Tony had been affected too, because the only way that this could be more humiliating than it already was would have been if she were the only one who'd collapsed on one of her teammates crying -- in public, no less.  
  
Jan sighed, tucking her feet up under herself, and let her head drop back against the smooth leather arm of the couch in the Avengers' living room; even though the toxin’s effects had worn off hours ago, she still felt shaky and feverish. She also felt a strange sense of distance from the hysterical woman who had wanted to hide under a table in the Meridian, almost as if it had been someone else stepping in and making a fool of herself.  
  
Once the drug had worn off, her reactions just seemed disproportionate and silly. She couldn't imagine herself overreacting like that, even back when she'd been a twenty-two year old socialite playing at being a superhero.  
  
Hank hadn't met her eyes since she'd come back to her senses and found him lurking in the hallway; he'd barely even looked her in the face. And that made Jan feel even worse than the shakiness in her muscles and the lingering feeling of illness that Hank had guiltily confessed was probably due as much to the antidote as to the toxin.  
  
She knew perfectly well that she had no reason to feel guilty over her drug-induced fear of Hank, because Hank actually had given her a reason to be scared of him. But that had been a long time ago, and she wanted to think that they'd gotten over it, moved past it, and knew that for the most part, she had. At least, when she wasn't being drugged out of her mind.  
  
How could she expect Hank to keep trying when around every turn, there was something to remind him of the mistakes he'd made? The mistakes they'd both made.  
  
Jan pulled the wool afghan Jarvis always left hanging over the back of the couch up higher over her shoulders. It was crocheted from red and blue wool, and was one of the few things that had survived the destruction of the Avengers mansion -- somehow, its presence made the living room feel familiar and lived-in, despite the lack of decoration on the walls.  
  
They had all been staying here for a month, but so far no one had suggested putting new pictures up. They all knew exactly what had once hung all over the walls of Tony's apartment, and they knew why they'd been taken down.  
  
There was a slight noise from the doorway; Jan looked up from the book she wasn't reading to see Hank slink into the room. Not looking at her, he crossed to the chair farthest away from Jan's couch and sat down, burying his nose what Jan assumed were the reports from the hospital.  
  
She knew her reaction to him in the hospital had hurt him, but she didn't know how to apologize for that without hurting him more in the process.  
  
Five minutes later, Hank was still hiding on the other side of the giant living room, and Jan had decided that this was getting ridiculous. "Hank," she said abruptly, "would you mind bringing that pillow over here?" She waved a hand, indicating the throw pillow that was lying on the seat of the empty armchair next to Hank.  
  
"I, um, sure," Hank said, snatching up the deep green pillow and carrying it over to her. He held it out toward her like an offering.  
  
Jan took it from him and stuck it behind her back, snuggling into it, and the tense set of Hank's shoulders eased slightly.   
  
Jan rubbed the corner of the pillow between her fingers thoughtfully. That had worked better than she had expected. Not only was Hank on her side of the room now, it had somehow gotten him to relax. He still wasn't looking at her, but he was no longer holding himself as if braced for rejection, as if he expected at any moment for her to demand that he leave the room.  
  
What else could she make him bring her?  
  
"While you're up, would you mind getting me a glass of water?"  
  
Hank deflated slightly, and Jan realized that he might have interpreted that as an attempt to get rid of him. "And get yourself some ice cream," she added quickly.   
  
Hank gave her a tentative nod, and turned away, starting for the door.  
  
"With two spoons," Jan called after him. "And bring your ice cream back here."  
  
Hank stopped in his tracks and turned to look back at her, a smile slowly dawning on his face. "You know, my ice cream has calories, too," he said, an uncertain note in his voice in spite of the smile he still wore.  
  
"Other people's desserts never have calories," Jan said, cheerfully, "it's a rule."  
  
The uncertainty had fallen away from Hank's expression, leaving just the shy smile behind. Hank was cute when he smiled like that; it was a shame he didn't do it more often. Jan found herself smiling back.  
  
"What kind of ice cream will I be eating?"   
  
Jan made a great show of thinking carefully about it . "The pint of Häagen-Dazs in the freezer door. The caramelized pear and toasted pecan flavor."  
  
Hank wrinkled his nose ever so slightly -- he was of the opinion that all ice cream ought to be either chocolate or vanilla.  
  
"Every time you buy a carton of it, Häagen-Dazs donates money to help preserve honey bee populations."  
  
"All right," he said, smiling again. "Pear ice cream it is."  
  
  


***

  
  
  
Steve unbuttoned his shirt and shrugged out it, tossing it over the back of a chair, and rolled his neck. It had been a long two days.  
  
Tony was sitting on the side of the bed, facing away from him. He was already undressed, wearing boxers and one of Steve's t-shirts. Somehow, without either of them mentioning it, Tony wearing his shirts to sleep in had become something of a habit; Steve probably should have protested this theft of clothing, since it meant that he ran through clean shirts noticeably faster than he ought to have, but he'd never quite gotten around to it. He had to admit that there was something oddly satisfying about the sight of Tony wearing his clothing.  
  
Steve folded his jeans in half and laid them over the back of the chair, on top of the shirt, then sat down on his own side of the bed, stretching his arms over his head; his shoulders ached from wearing his shield for too long, and that half-hour of sleep he'd snatched in Tony's hospital room last night hadn't been nearly enough.  
  
He knew Tony was even more exhausted. Jan had dozed on the couch for most of the day, recovering from the fear toxin and its antidote. Tony, on the other hand, had refused to go and lie down; instead, he had listlessly followed Steve from room to room around the Avengers' living quarters.  
  
"You were right," Tony said quietly.  
  
Steve blinked, turning to look over his shoulder at Tony; Tony would fall over where he stood before he'd admit that other people's suggestions that he might need sleep had any merit, so he wasn't talking about Steve's not-so-subtle suggestion that it was time they went to bed. Which only left the conversation that they had had right after he had woken up in the hospital.  
  
Was Tony actually admitting that he needed to pay more attention to his own physical well-being? That seemed almost too good to be true, especially since Steve, given some time to think, had realized over the course of the day that Tony had had a valid point earlier; people had been in danger, and Tony had been one of the only two people there who could do anything control the situation. With a little distance between himself and the reality of Tony semi-conscious with monitors attached to him, Steve could admit that he had been reacting purely on emotion, rather than logic.  
  
"You saved some of those people's lives," Steve said, equally quietly. Tony's shoulders were slumped; staring at his back, Steve could see the hard angles of his shoulder blades through the thin shirt.  
  
"No," Tony said, shaking his head, "I was compromised. I could have lost control and hurt someone."  
  
Apparently it  _had_  been too good to be true. "I would have done the same thing," Steve said, rising and walking around to Tony's side of the bed, wanting to look him in the eye. "You were right about that." Maybe if he turned the situation around, Tony would realize that the issue at hand was that Steve had been worried not about the risk he had put other people at, but the risk he had exposed himself to apparently without even noticing it.  
  
"It's not the same," Tony's voice was still low, tired. "You don't have repulsor beams in your gloves." He half-raised one hand, palm facing out, and Steve could see the small bruise on the inside of his elbow, where the IV needle had been. "You have no idea how easy it would be to... I blew a man's head off with them."  
  
Maya's first test subject for the Extremis, Steve guessed. His skull had been completely vaporized when SHIELD had finally gotten there; the media had been very fond of reminding people of that particular gory detail. Tony wouldn't have resorted to that level of lethal force unless he'd had no other options. While the Avengers very rarely killed, at one point or another, they all knew that the possibility was a potential last resort. It still wasn't an option any of them would exercise lightly.  
  
It wasn't the time to debate this; not now, not while they were both exhausted. "You could have hurt someone," Steve admitted, hating to give Tony's guilt more fuel but unwilling to lie, "but you didn't. You saved people's lives," he repeated, letting some of his frustration leak through. "You know you did."  
  
"But I could have-" Tony started.  
  
"It's late," Steve interrupted, laying a hand on Tony's shoulder. "We can talk about this in the morning."  
  
Tony nodded, his eyes closing for a second, and Steve moved his hand up a little higher, sliding it over the rough edge of his t-shirt until his fingers were resting against Tony's bare skin. Underneath his palm, the tendons in Tony's neck were rigid with tension.  
  
Steve sighed, and let his hand fall back to his side. Tony needed sleep. They both needed sleep.  
  
Steve walked back around to his side of the bed and lay down. After a moment, Tony joined him under the covers, where he lay staring up at the ceiling with as much space between them as the size of the bed allowed.  
  
It had only been a week since the last time the two of them had shared a bed, but it felt like much longer; Steve closed his eyes, and thought about rolling over so that he was closer to Tony, close enough to wrap an arm around him and lay his head on Tony's chest. Lying like that, he could hear Tony's heartbeat, and Tony would lay a warm hand on the middle of his back, between his shoulder-blades, and run his fingers through Steve’s hair. It was the one thing Steve had found that always kept away nightmares, and even though he hadn't had any lately, he just... slept better that way.  
  
The gap between him and Tony felt much wider than the bare few inches of mattress between them counted for. The memory of Tony flinching away from his touch was all too clear; Steve rolled over onto his side, facing away from Tony. Sleep was a long time in coming.  
  
He wasn't entirely sure what woke him; maybe Tony had moved slightly, or made some noise. Whatever it was, it jolted Steve out of a sound sleep. He blinked, trying to wake himself up enough to figure out what was happening. Beside him, Tony made a small, distressed sound.  
  
Steve rolled over, propping himself up on his elbow, and looked at Tony. It was the middle of the night, and not much light filtered in through the bedroom window, but there was sufficient illumination for Steve to make out the way Tony's eyebrows were drawn together into a thin, unhappy line.  
  
It looked like tonight was Tony's turn to have nightmares.  
  
Steve sat up, leaning over Tony, and gave his shoulder a gentle shake.  
  
The result was immediate and explosive. Tony's eyes snapped open, and he came up swinging, fist catching Steve in the face hard enough that he saw stars for a moment.  
  
Steve lurched back, pressing the back of his hand to his mouth, tasting blood. "Sonuvabitch," he spat, "I knew you were holding out on me. Why don't you hit like that when we're sparring?"  
  
Tony stared at him, eyes wide, his expression shifting from confusion to a sort of frozen horror. "Oh God," he gasped hoarsely, pushing himself up and away from Steve. "I'm sorry. I'm sor-"  
  
Steve reached a hand out instinctively, wanting to erase that look from Tony's face.  
  
Tony recoiled, throwing himself backwards out of the bed so that he was standing several feet away, leaving Steve crouched in a tangle of sheets, one hand still outstretched. "You're bleeding," Tony whispered.  
  
He had said the same thing in the Meridian. "It's okay," Steve said, his throat tight. "It was a dream, remember?"  
  
Tony shook his head mutely, taking a step backward. Then he turned on his heel abruptly and left the room, back stiff.  
  
The cat, who had been crouched unhappily in Steve's upturned shield, clearly woken by the noise, got to his feet and dashed through the door after him, body low to the ground.  
  
"Damn it," Steve swore, his hand dropping back to the bed. He grabbed a fistful of the sheets, crumpling them between his fingers. He had no idea what he was supposed to do.  
  
After a moment, he disentangled himself from the bedding and went after Tony.  
  
The hallway proved to already be empty of Tony. It did, however, contain Sam, who was standing in the open door of his room, a paperback book in one hand. "First Tony, now you," he said, shaking his head slightly. "What are you doing up? You looked pretty beat before, and you just went to bed a couple hours ago."   
  
Before Steve could answer, Sam's gaze fixed on his face, and he raised his eyebrows, adding, "Don't tell me; you finally tripped over your shield. That's what you get for keeping it on the floor next to your bed."  
  
Sam was smirking at him. "I did not trip over my shield. I have never tripped over my shield." That one time back when he'd been staying in Sam's apartment didn't count; he'd only stumbled slightly, not actually tripped. Unfortunately, Sam had been there to see it.  
  
Sam's smirk widened; he was obviously remembering the same incident, but mercifully, he didn't bring it up. "Then what happened to your face?" he asked, instead.  
  
"Have you seen Tony?" Steve's split lip was immaterial; he needed to find Tony, to deal with this, whatever it was, before it got any worse. "I need to talk to him."  
  
Sam's eyes narrowed, all signs of levity vanishing instantly. "Did Stark do that?"  
  
He didn't have time to rehash the "Tony isn't good enough for you" argument right now. Not when Tony was this upset. Tony had a bad habit of doing stupid things when he was upset. "Yes, Sam," Steve snapped, "I'm a battered wife." Sam's expression shifted from concerned to annoyed, and Steve immediately felt bad; Sam had done nothing to merit being snarled at. "I asked for it," he elaborated. "I know better than to shake people awake from nightmares." Sam would understand that; Steve knew he'd accidentally clocked his friend at least once, when his own nightmares periodically resurfaced.  
  
Sam tilted his head to one side, considering that. It was a gesture Steve had seen Redwing make any number of times. "Hey, it could be worse," Sam offered, after a moment. "Last time he hit you, he broke your jaw."  
  
"He only fractured it," Steve said defensively. "He could have caved my skull in if he'd wanted to." Unarmored, Steve could mop the floor with Tony, but in the armor, Tony could go toe-to-toe with just about anyone short of the Hulk. And that wasn't even counting the repulsor gauntlets, which, as Tony had pointed out, could be deadly weapons.  
  
He'd been too angry to notice it at the time, the hurt from Tony's betrayal still too raw, but Tony had been seriously holding back during that first big fight over Registration. Steve should not have been able to get into a fistfight with an armored-up Iron Man and walk away with nothing but some bruises and a couple of cracked bones.  
  
Tony had been pulling his punches. And he'd never changed the armor's override codes. Whether consciously or not, Tony's heart hadn't been in that fight. There were times when Steve wondered if he'd ever stop kicking himself for not sitting down to a reasonable discussion with Tony sooner; it would have spared all of them so much misery.  
  
Sam blinked, shaking his head slowly. "Right. I think he's in the living room. But you might want to wash your face off, first."  
  
Steve touched the end of his tongue to his torn lip; it was still bleeding sluggishly. He scrubbed the back of his hand across his mouth, trying to wipe the blood away.   
  
"Yeah, that's gonna help," Sam snorted. "Now you've got blood smeared all over your chin."  
  
"Thanks," Steve said. "Sorry we woke you up."  
  
Sam shrugged, hefting the paperback in his right hand. "I was awake anyway. Go clean yourself up and make nice with your boyfriend."  
  
Steve smiled, ignoring the sting as it pulled at his lip. The term 'boyfriend' sounded silly as a description, as least when it came to himself and Tony, but there wasn't really a term that properly defined what they were to each other. 'Lover' implied that their whole relationship was about sex, and 'partner'... Bucky had been Steve's partner, and Sam. "I'll do that," Steve said.  
  
He didn't like the extra delay, but he ducked into the bathroom to throw a few handfuls of water on his face and rinse out his mouth. As soon as he saw himself in the mirror, he realized that Sam had been right; there was a wide smear of blood across his chin and the right side of his face, and his teeth were red.  
  
It was the sight of his blood that had upset Tony so much in the first place. Walking up to him looking like he'd just been in a fistfight probably wouldn't have been a good idea.  
  
The living room was dark, lit only by the light from the windows and the faint glow of the digital clock on the DVD player. Tony was a dark shape on the couch, face buried in his hands. As Steve stepped into the room, he heard Tony sigh; he obviously knew Steve was there, even if he wasn't looking up.   
  
From somewhere in one of the room's darker corners, Steve could hear the quiet squeaking sound the cat made when it was bored and looking for something to destroy. Aside from that, the room was almost oppressively quiet.  
  
"Okay," Steve said into the silence, "we've established that you  _are_  pulling your punches, and that I need to work on ducking."  
  
"I'm so sorry," Tony said, the words muffled by his hands. "I don't mean to hurt you, but I keep doing it anyway."  
  
Steve shook his head, even though he knew Tony wouldn't see the gesture. "You didn't hurt me," he said, going to stand in front of Tony. "You woke up from a nightmare and socked me in the face by accident. It's nothing Bucky and I didn't do to each other a few times during the war. I should have been more careful." He knelt, needing to be able to look Tony in the eye. He'd never admitted to anyone else that the occasional nightmares he had about the war had started before he'd been trapped in the ice. After a while, they'd all learned to be careful waking each other up, and that rule applied just as much to superheroes as it did to soldiers.  
  
"I could have hurt you." Tony lifted his head from his hands; even this close, Steve could still barely make out his expression in the dim light. "When that poison was affecting me... it's a miracle I didn't hurt anyone. Next time something like this happens, I might."  
  
Steve didn't like the way Tony's voice sounded, didn't like that he couldn't see his face. "You don't know that."  
  
"It's happened before. Right after I got the Extremis, and then before that, with Kang." Tony shook his head, looking away. "In the hospital, earlier... I thought that you were still dead, and that I'd killed you."  
  
"Oh," Steve said, softly, hands twitching uselessly at his sides. He'd been almost certain something like that had been going through Tony's mind, but hearing Tony actually say it made Steve ache all over again, for how badly he had been hurting yesterday. He laid a hand on Tony's shoulder, just the way he had before they'd gone to bed, and brushed his thumb gently over the bare skin of Tony's neck. "I'm right here. None of that was real."  
  
"It could have been." Tony's voice was low, but the words were surprisingly forceful. "I might not always be safe to be around."  
  
"Tony," Steve said slowly, the worry that had been filling him joined by a sudden urge to grind his teeth, "are you actually suggesting that I should reconsider our relationship because someday you might end up being mind-controlled?" If he let that possibility keep him from getting close to people, he wouldn't have any friends left. If he'd been able to forgive Sharon for shooting him, forgive Bucky for trying to assassinate him as the Winter Soldier, what made Tony think Steve would be willing to give him up over something that hadn't even happened. "Should I get rid of Sharon and Bucky, too? And Sam, just to be safe?"  
  
"No," Tony mumbled, face turned away, "that would be unfair."  
  
"Yes," Steve said, slowly and clearly. "It would be. And not just to them."  
  
Tony looked up, the faint light from the window making his face appear washed out, his hair and goatee even darker than normal.  
  
"Everyone I love has been manipulated like that at some point," Steve went on. Tony, Bucky, Sharon, Sam, most of the other Avengers, with the possible exception of Clint and Jan. "And every time, I've hated that I couldn't protect them, or prevent it." Bucky had spent years as the Soviet Union's tool, and Steve hadn't even known. Tony had nearly died right after gaining the Extremis, when that hacker had mind-controlled him. Sharon still could barely look him in the eyes. "But I refuse to lose someone because of it." He flexed his fingers, tightening his grip on Tony's shoulder. "I love you, and I'm not going to lose you over this. I-"  
  
Steve broke off, his next words vanishing on his tongue as he realized exactly what he had just said. He had never said "I love you" to Tony, never been sure how to say it, and for a few hours yesterday, he been afraid that he would never get the chance to. The words were out there now, hanging in the air between them.  
  
"I'm being stupid, aren't I?" Tony said ruefully, and Steve could hear the smile in his voice.  
  
Steve blinked. He'd expected more of a reaction when he finally worked up the courage to say the words. Maybe Tony hadn't noticed. "Yes," he agreed. "You are being stupid." He let go of Tony, standing, the memory of those hours spent watching Tony lie there motionless suddenly crashing down on him. "You- I was afraid you weren't coming back."  
  
"Steve." Tony stood, taking a step toward him, but Steve was on a roll now.  
  
"You wouldn't talk to me, and you wouldn't let me touch you, and you promised I wouldn't have to do this by myself." He hadn't meant to say that last bit; the words had just burst out on their own.  
  
"I'm sorry." Tony had a hand on his arm now, just above his elbow, and was squeezing gently.  
  
Steve shook his head, laughing a little. It sounded slightly hysterical even to him. "If you apologize again for something that isn't your fault, I'm going to have to hit you, and then Sam really will think our relationship is abusive."  
  
Tony let go of him abruptly. "What?"  
  
"I don't know if that's better or worse than thinking I tripped over my own shield," Steve went on, belatedly realizing that after Kathy Dare, the ex-girlfriend who had shot him in the spine and then tried to avoid attempted murder charges by claiming that he'd abused her, Tony might not find that kind of joke funny.  
  
"Well," Tony said, shifting towards him, so that their arms were just brushing. "if you didn't keep it right next to the bed..."  
  
"I didn't trip over my shield," Steve protested. "I've  _never_  tripped over my shield."  
  
Tony shook his head. "You know," he said softly, leaning his weight against Steve for a moment, "if you hung it on the wall, the cat wouldn't be able to chew on it."  
  
"Can we go back to bed?" Steve asked, not at all plaintively. "It's three am." Actually, it was probably closer to one, but he was tired. Also, Tony was about two minutes away from putting his head on Steve's shoulder and falling asleep standing up.  
  
Tony nodded, and the two of them returned to the bedroom, Steve ushering Tony along with a hand on the small of his back.  
  
Steve stepped carefully around his upturned shield, then stopped, an idea striking him, and bent down to flip it over, so that it was convex, the smooth surface dully reflecting the faint light from the window.  
  
Tony had come to a halt in the middle of the room, and was now blinking slowly at the boxes; he was starting to look slightly dazed with exhaustion. "Are you ever planning to unpack those?" he asked, frowning.  
  
"I was going to wait until we moved back into the mansion." Until they were really back home. "I thought maybe you could help me unpack them then, if you don't mind."  
  
"That will be nice," Tony said vaguely. Steve wasn't entirely sure if that was a real answer, or if Tony had just hit that point of exhaustion where he would agree with whatever you said because processing human speech had become too difficult.  
  
Over the past month, Steve had guiltily found himself somewhat enjoying Tony in this particular stage of sleep-deprived fatigue; Tony tended to start using Steve as furniture when he was tired. Steve shook his head, and gave Tony a gentle shove in the direction of the bed.  
  
This time, there wasn't any empty space between them. Steve slid over until he was lying half on top of Tony, wrapping an arm around his waist and burying his face in Tony's neck. There would have been interesting possibilities inherent in this position, especially after a week spent apart, but right now, they were both too tired to do anything more than just lie there.  
  
Yesterday, he'd been afraid that he would never be able to do this again. That Tony had gone beyond his reach forever. Steve's arm tightened reflexively, and he closed his eyes, breathing in the faint scent of metal that always seemed to cling to Tony's skin.  
  
He'd come so close to losing this.  
  
Tony had spent over a month thinking he was dead. Steve didn't even want to think about what he would have done if it had been him in that position. He'd barely been able to hold it together through a single afternoon.  
  
At least he knew now that he could still function in a combat or rescue situation even when Tony was involved; he hadn't fallen apart until after they'd gotten to the hospital.  
  
After a moment, Tony said, quietly, "I know you're back. I know it's okay." He wrapped an arm over Steve's shoulders, his hand resting on Steve's back, as if to hold him in place. "I am getting better, I swear."  
  
There was something almost sad, Steve reflected, about the fact that Tony felt the need to apologize for his own pain, as if he didn't have the right to be damaged by everything that had happened to them in the past year.  
  
"When I'm not under the influence of mind-altering drugs, I'm mostly better."  
  
"I know," Steve said. It was true, more or less. He hoped it was true.  
  
There were a few moments of silence while Steve listened to Tony breathe. Then, from beside the bed, there came a sort of scrabbling noise, the kind of sound that might be produced by claws on metal. It was followed by the very faint thud of a small, furry body sliding off Steve's shield and onto the floor, then by an even fainter hiss.  
  
Steve grinned against Tony's neck.  
  
"Congratulations, Captain America." Tony spoke in solemn tones, but Steve could hear the amusement underneath. "You've defeated a five pound kitten."  
  
Steve kept on grinning, feeling faintly smug. "I know."  
  
Tony made the soft sighing sound that he only made when he was starting to fall asleep. "I do too, you know," he mumbled.  
  
"What?" Steve asked. He was the only one who got to hear that little contented sound these days, he reflected, with sleepy satisfaction.  
  
"Love you," Tony sighed, and then he was asleep.


	7. Chapter 7

The Avengers' living room was a much less convenient place from which to run an international business than Tony's office was. However, thanks to threats from Pepper and a combination of blackmail and bribery from Steve, Tony had agreed to work from home for the day.  
  
Technically, he'd agreed to take a day  _off_  from work and stay home, but since Steve was elsewhere for the moment, what he didn't know wouldn't hurt Tony.  
  
SE's VP of Sales was generally gratingly upbeat, but lately his emailed memos had become terse and to the point, and his voice, filtered from his cell phone through the Extremis, currently sounded impatient and annoyed.  _*SHIELD wants to know why Stark Enterprises will let them purchase body armor containing proprietary SE hardware, but won't sell them any repulsor-based technology.*_  
  
Because after all of the trouble he'd gone through to keep his armor's specs out of Nick Fury's hands over the years, he wasn't about to just hand them over now, no matter how much SE might need SHIELD's business after losing the US military contracts.  
  
 _*I think SHIELD will find, if they read the fine print, that the contract for the body armor only licensed a one-time purchase of the basic hardware. Nothing about software, or, shall we say, extra features, was mentioned.*_  
  
 _Director Fury has been threatening to come to my office in person.*_  And that, Tony thought wryly, would explain the sudden ill temper.  
  
 _*The contract is explicitly laid out,*_  he said.  _*They got exactly what they were promised. If Fury wants to bitch at somebody, have him call me.*_  
  
 _*All right, sir.*_  The "it's your funeral" was unspoken, but came through loud and clear anyway.  
  
Tony should have been in a meeting with Stark Enterprise's board of directors right now, discussing the business forecast for the next year and avoiding discussing the fact that he was once again funding the Avengers. Pepper had convinced him that he ought to reschedule for tomorrow. "When you show up to a meeting pale and shaky, with circles under your bloodshot eyes," she had said, "there's only one assumption the board is going to make, and it's not that you just spent twenty-four hours in a hospital."  
  
Tony had pointed out that he  _had_  just spent twenty-four hours in the hospital, and, moreover, that it had been on the news, but he'd taken her point. With businessmen, as with supervillains, it was never a good idea to show weakness.  
  
There were forty-six new messages in his in-box. Tony scanned the titles, and deleted everything that wasn't from Pepper or Sal or marked "urgent." CNN and the other major news stations were mercifully free of footage from the Meridian now; naked pictures of a recent American Idol winner had surfaced on the Internet yesterday, and no one cared about Tony Stark and Janet Van Dyne being hospitalized anymore. The pictures, to Tony's semi-expert eye, looked photoshopped, but that hadn't deterred  _The New York Sun_  and  _Entertainment Tonight_  yet, and probably never would.  
  
"My God," Clint's voice broke in on Tony's thoughts, "what the hell's wrong with your eyes?"  
  
Tony blinked, immediately shutting off the Extremis, and looked up to find Clint standing in the doorway. He almost asked him not to tell Steve, but remembered just in time that that would be the best way to ensure that he would.  
  
He hadn't had a nosebleed in weeks, and, as long as he limited the number of connections he kept open at one time, no headaches either. At this point, Steve was just being unreasonably paranoid about the Extremis; there was no longer any reason to avoid using it.  
  
"Clint," he said, "are you looking for Steve?" He realized that he'd been unconsciously rubbing at his temples with his left hand, and halted the gesture immediately, letting his hands fall back to his lap. Apparently, he'd developed a reflexive habit, despite the fact that it didn't hurt anymore.  
  
"Kind of," Clint started. "I don't know." He shrugged, looking oddly hesitant. "Maybe." He had one shoulder resting against the doorframe, superficially casual, but Tony could see him shifting his weight on the balls of his feet, as if prepared to defend himself or run.  
  
"Is something wrong?" That uneasy expression was not something Tony was used to seeing on Clint.  
  
"I don't know," Clint repeated. He frowned, then seemed to come to a decision of some sort, and stepped into the room, dropping into the chair across from Tony.  
  
"You've had people mess with your head before," he said, after a moment. "And, well, let's just say you've gotten around."  
  
"You could say that," Tony admitted, with a smile he didn't feel. Mind control was not something he particularly wanted to talk about right now, but Clint was clearly worried about something.  
  
"You know how it took me a while to turn up again after I came back from the dead?" Clint started. He was picking at a loose thread on the knee of his jeans, slowly turning a small hole in the fabric into a larger one.  
  
Tony nodded.  
  
"I kind of went looking for Wanda, and then I found her, hiding in this little town, with amnesia, and kind of, um, left her there. After sleeping with her." Clint mumbled this last bit in a rush, still intent on the widening hole in his jeans.  
  
Tony nodded once more, not saying anything. Clint was having enough trouble getting the words out as it was. And Tony had done more than his fair share of sleeping with people in deeply unfortunate circumstances; who was he to throw stones?  
  
"Except, I can't really remember sleeping with her, or deciding to sleep with her. It just kind of... happened." Another pause, then, "Carol thinks maybe I was mind-controlled. That means I wasn't really taking advantage of her, right?"  
  
"I've been told on good authority that having sex with someone when they're too drunk to say yes or no is something like assault," Tony said slowly. It wasn't a question with a clear-cut answer, particularly since he only knew what Clint had just told him, and Clint didn't know the whole story himself. "Being under mind-control is kind of like being drunk; you're not in control of your actions, so I guess it would be the same thing. If anything, if you were under some kind of mind-control, she took advantage of you."  
  
"Great," Clint sighed. He didn't look comforted; Tony had the feeling his words hadn't been helpful. "So I'm a date-rape victim. Why does that not make me feel better?"  
  
"Because no one likes being a victim." Tony looked away, running a hand through his hair, and thought for a second.  
  
"How sure are you that she had amnesia?"  
  
"Pretty sure. She wasn't acting like herself at all." Clint shook his head. "She didn't remember having powers, or even who I was. She's an omega level mutant. If she'd known who I was, and thought I was some kind of threat, she could have just wriggled her nose and winked me out of existence."  
  
"Where was she?"  
  
Clint started to answer, then stopped, making a face. "I... don't know. I have no freaking idea. She must have whammied that out of my head, too."  
  
So Wanda was out there somewhere, possibly with amnesia, possibly still in full possession of her powers, and they had no idea where. Tony made a mental note to keep an eye out for any unexplained events or energy surges in Europe. "If she's not using her powers on a major scale, and she really does have amnesia, than she's not a major threat right this moment. We've got enough to deal with here without mounting a global search for someone who wants to stay lost and can use magic to keep it that way."  
  
"Are you sure?" Clint said dubiously, raising his eyebrows slightly. "I could try getting a telepath or Dr. Strange or somebody to un-mind-whammy me."  
  
"Right now, she's not doing anything. If we go after her, that could change. Who knows what it could provoke her into doing." Even if she truly did have amnesia, it would be risky; it was a proven fact that latent mutant powers activated when people were under stress.  
  
"After you and Cap's stupidity, everyone here's probably pretty tired of fighting fellow Avengers," Clint offered, after a moment of silence.  
  
If Tony was being honest with himself, that probably played a larger role in his decision that they didn't need to take on Wanda right now than he really liked to admit.  
  
"I just wish I knew why she brought me back," Clint went on.  
  
"Does it matter?" Tony shrugged one shoulder. "Like I told Steve, just be glad you have a second chance."  
  
"Did that get him to stop worrying about whether Doom had sacrificed thirteen virgins to Satan to bring him back?"  
  
"Maybe a little," Tony said. "At least, I hope so. Then I told him that evil done in the name of God is still evil, and good done in the name of the devil is still good, and his being back was good in my book." He said it with a grin, knowing that Clint had been roped into reading half the Chronicles of Narnia to Cassie when she'd been little.  
  
"Cap asked you for advice and you quoted  _The Horse and His Boy?"_  Clint stared at him for a moment, then snickered. "And he didn't just laugh at you?"  
  
"I didn't tell him what it was from," Tony admitted. "I said I thought it was in the Bible somewhere. Knowing C.S. Lewis, it probably is. Steve never read the whole series; he read the first book, and then Hank told him how the last one ended, so he didn't bother with the rest of them." At least Steve had been spared the experience of getting most of the way through the entire series before discovering that Narnia was all a lie. Tony had met very few fellow science fiction fans who didn't loathe  _The Last Battle_. Thor had been particularly disgusted when he had gotten to that point and discovered that Aslan was Jesus and not Odin.  
  
Clint shrugged. "They weren't that good after the second one, anyway. Not that I cared," he went on hastily, "since they're kids' books and I was only reading them to Cassie."  
  
Tony smirked, not bothering to dispute the claim; maybe Clint  _hadn't_  cared about Narnia, but that didn't change the fact that he had visibly teared up at the end of  _The Iron Giant_ , which they had also only been watching because of Cassie. Tony chose to overlook the fact that he had been teary-eyed himself; the movie had had an unexpectedly sad ending for a cartoon. He remembered thinking at the time that Scott ought to have warned them.  
  
Steve had also been secretly sucked in, though he hadn't really understood some of the jokes; there were times when it was easy to forget that he was from another time, and then there were times like that, when you remembered that he had missed the entire cold war. Steve...  
  
"Do me a favor," Tony said, holding a hand up. "When you tell Steve that Wanda's still out there, don't bring up the 'sleeping with people while they're mind controlled, and whether or not it's assault' part."  
  
"Why?" Clint asked, abruptly looking hunted again. "You think he'd be mad at me?"  
  
"I just don't think that's a conversation Steve really needs to have right now." That possible interpretation of events didn't seem to have occurred to Steve, and Tony intended to keep it that way. Steve had enough to deal with in the wake of everything that had happened to him, without adding that.  
  
"Oh," Clint said, not bothering to hide the fact that he hadn't followed that. "So, what the hell is up with your eyes?"  
  
"Ah, don't mention that to Steve, either."  
  
"Don't mention what to Steve?" Steve's voice came from the doorway, just as Clint, with typical bad timing, grinned, and said, "Is this connected to that thing where you can talk to computers but Cap doesn't like it because it makes your brains leak out your nose? God, you're whipped."  
  
"Tony," Steve's blue eyes took on a wounded, plaintive look that Tony was almost certain he was largely faking. "You promised you were actually going to take today off, and not just use the Extremis to telecommute."  
  
"You two are so married that it's sickening," Clint announced, bracing his hands against his thighs and standing. He surveyed them for a long moment, then shook his head, pulling a face. "God, I need to get laid. Jan's right. This team needs more girls."  
  
Steve did not actually say, "Very classy, Clint," but Tony could see him thinking it loudly.  
  
Tony watched Clint leave, then turned to Steve. "I'm not used to taking days off. I was bored." He looked up at Steve, offering him a smirk. "You said you'd stay here and distract me."  
  
"I did, didn't I?" Steve said, grinning slowly. He crossed the room in three long strides, and then he was sitting balanced on the arm of Tony's chair, facing him, an arrangement that made him a full head taller than Tony, instead of the usual couple of inches.  
  
Tony grabbed him by the front of his shirt and pulled him closer. Steve let himself be dragged forward, putting one big hand on the back of Tony's neck. Tony closed his eyes and tipped his head back, losing himself in the kiss. He had only been gone a week, but it felt like it had been so much longer. He gave the front of Steve's shirt another tug, leaning backwards, and Steve slid forward, off the chair's arm, until he was half in Tony's lap, not breaking the kiss.  
  
He had been so certain that he'd lost Steve again.  
  
Steve's other hand was on his hip now, thumb tucked inside the waistband of his jeans. "We should move this somewhere else," Steve breathed, lips still inches away from Tony's.  
  
"Good idea," Tony said, pulling his gaze away from Steve's mouth to meet his eyes. "I promised Jarvis that you wouldn't break any more furniture."  
  
"That wasn't my fault," Steve protested, a flush spreading across his cheekbones. "It was a very spindly bed."  
  
Tony grinned. He'd actually been thinking of the time Steve had thrown his shield inside the front hallway of the mansion, taking out a laundry list of antiques. "The new one is wrought iron," he said, "and I built it, so I can assure you that it's anything but spindly."  
  
"You left for DC," Steve said. He pressed an open-mouthed kiss on the corner of Tony's jaw, and slid his hand from behind Tony's neck, moving it to rest warm and solid on the center of Tony's chest. "I don't think we've thoroughly tested it."  
  
"You're right." Tony ran one hand up Steve's thigh and hooked the other into the front of his jeans. "All Stark Enterprises products are tested to destruction."  
  
"In that case, we'll have to be very thorough." Steve drew the fingers of his right hand down Tony's chest, across his stomach, and then stood up, pulling Tony with him. "You have a reputation to maintain."  
  
Tony grinned even wider, and let Steve drag him down the hallway to their bedroom; he did, in fact, have a reputation to maintain.  
  
  


***

  
  
  
Tony had disappeared again. If he was hiding in a corner somewhere, using the Extremis to hold a Stark Enterprises teleconference, Steve was going to physically haul him back to their room and tie him to the bed. He'd established only hours ago that the metal bed frame was very solid indeed, so it would take a long time for Tony to get himself loose.  
  
Actually, that idea had possibilities beyond simply keeping Tony out of trouble. Not that that could actually stop him from using the Extremis, but that just meant Steve would have to put a little extra effort into distracting him.  
  
Which was probably something best thought about when they didn't have company, Steve decided; he could hear voices coming from the living room.  
  
"You know perfectly well I can do my own maintenance work," Rhodey was saying. "How many days did Pepper make you promise to stay out of the lab and away from your armor?"  
  
"All I promised Pepper was that I'd stay home from work today," Tony countered. "Steve's the one who made me promise to stay out of the lab. And that I wouldn't use the Extremis to telecommute."  
  
Steve halted in the living room doorway, torn between amusement and exasperation. Tony and Rhodey were sitting side-by-side on the long leather couch, their backs to him. Several pieces of the War Machine armor were spread out on the coffee table, and Tony, who had informed Steve mere hours ago that they had to be careful not to damage Jarvis's furniture, was poking at them absently with a tiny screwdriver. A small, pen-shaped implement that Steve recognized as a pocket acetylene torch was sitting on the polished table top, next to one of Rhodey's half-disassembled jet-boots.  
  
Steve hadn't really expected Tony to stay away from his tech toys for a whole day. At least he was sitting down in the living room in relative comfort instead of downstairs using the armor's augmented strength to manhandle Quinjet engine blocks.  
  
"Your cat is staring at me," Rhodey commented.  
  
The cat was, in fact, staring at him. It was sitting on the floor a foot or so away from the couch, unblinking blue gaze fixed on Rhodey.  
  
"It's Jarvis's cat." Tony was holding one of the boots on his lap now, poking at its sole with the screwdriver. "There's a crack in the edge of the jet propulsion unit's housing. You've got melted glass in it."  
  
"That would be from stepping in powdered glass while I helped rescue your ass from that restaurant. The jet boots must have slagged it." Rhodey bent down and picked up the bundle of purple feathers the cat had just spat out at his feet. "Here," he said. "Go chase something."  
  
"Dogs chase things, not cats." Tony shrugged one shoulder, and added, voice rueful, "This can't have been much of a vacation for you. Sorry."  
  
Rhodey tossed the feathers away from him. The cat launched itself at them with a clumsy speed that Steve had learned by this point was born of insanity. "After Gyrich, Gauntlet, and Justice, stopping crazy people from jumping out tenth-story windows is a vacation," Rhodey said, cat dealt with.  
  
Tony's shoulders, seen from behind, had a relaxed set to them, no sign of the tension that had been there this morning. For all that Steve had hoped to get him to rest and recover from AIM's poison, a chance to play with the War Machine armor would probably do him almost as much good as actual rest.  
  
The part of Steve that wanted to snarl at Rhodey to stay away from Tony, to keep his paws off him because he'd tried to hurt him in the past, was completely irrational and motivated solely by leftover protectiveness from yesterday.  
  
Being jealous of Rhodey because Tony used to have a crush on him was equally irrational, especially since Steve had no problem with the two dozen women Tony had slept with over the years. Well, the ones that hadn't tried to kill Tony.  
  
"You think there's any chance Spiderman might be willing to sign on with us?" Rhodey went on. "He's been doing this since he was younger than most of those kids, and he's got actual experience as a teacher, which is more than the rest of us have."  
  
"Honestly? I think there's about as much chance of Peter signing on for anything that's got 'Initiative' in the name as there is of Roxxon Oil suddenly deciding to sponsor Greenpeace."  
  
"Yeah. You know, you might want to rethink 'lying to people for their own good' as a leadership strategy."  
  
"Really? It's always worked so well until now."  
  
Rhodey snorted. "The next time you open a conversation with 'Rhodey, old friend, can you do me a favor?' remind me to say 'hell no."  
  
"Oh, come on. It can't be that bad."  
  
"Oh yes it can. It's even worse than having to work with John Walker every day, with you in full-on crazy mode for a team leader."  
  
Steve took a step forward into the room, intending to put a halt to this line of conversation before it went any further. Tony didn't need any reminders of that godawful mess with Immortus's mind control right now, not after spending most of a day in a semi-catatonic huddle because he'd been convinced that he had killed people. Steve himself preferred not to dwell on those few months either; for a brief but miserable period, they had all honestly thought that Tony had truly gone over the edge, had become a killer. He'd broken free of Immortus' hold in the end, just in time to help defeat him, but Steve had very nearly lost him forever.  
  
"I didn't realize you hated being part of the program that much." Tony's voice was chagrined, his shoulders tensing up and his fingers halting whatever they were doing to Rhodey's boots, and Steve took another step into the room.  
  
"Ignore me." Rhodey waved a hand dismissively. "I don't actually hate it. I think it's important. I'm just frustrated that nobody else seems to."  
  
"Of course we all-" Tony started, clearly preparing to assure Rhodey that everyone thought turning sixteen-year-olds into a superpowered auxiliary to the U.S. military was a good idea.  
  
"A lot of people still have reservations about the Initiative," Steve said mildly, stepping into Rhodey and Tony's line of sight. "That fact that it was originally compulsory didn't endear it to anyone."  
  
Rhodey looked up, raised an eyebrow at Steve, and shook his head slightly, frustration visible in the set of his face for a moment. "You know, I wouldn't expect you of all people to have any issues with superheroes getting government training."  
  
It hadn't been the source of the training he'd objected to, but that fact that they hadn't had a choice, and that there had been no way to be sure of what the government planned to use them for. And recruiting children was... Steve frowned, and shrugged, uncomfortable now. "I was twenty-one when I signed on for it. I was already an adult. I've seen what happens when you put kids in costumes and send them into war zones." He wondered sometimes what Bucky would be like if he'd had a chance to have a normal childhood - he'd had that taken away from him long before the explosion.  
  
"You know we're not doing that anymore," Rhodey said, and the irritation was clear this time. "We were barely doing that in the first place; the trainees were only to be sent into action as a last resort." He frowned, and paused for a moment, adding, "I'm pretty sure Baron von Blitzschlag was trying to set up some kind of under the table black ops program with some of the recruits, but he's gone now, and I can personally assure you that none of those kids are going to do anything more dangerous than put out forest fires in Colorado until they're eighteen. Trust me," he looked up at Steve, meeting his eyes directly, "there's already been one lawsuit, and we don't want to give any more parents a reason to sue us."  
  
Tony was very intently studying Rhodey's boot, as if prying tiny pieces of glass out of the mechanism required every single bit of his attention. His head was bent, wisps of hair hanging down over his eyes, and he'd already managed to acquire a thin smear of soot over one cheekbone.  
  
Jarvis's reaction the next time he saw the top of the coffee table was going to be interesting.  
  
On the one hand, Steve probably ought to find Rhodey's explanation reassuring. On the other hand... "Baron von Blitzschlag?" he repeated slowly. "I'm pretty sure I heard his name during the war, and I think it was in connection with Heinrich Zemo." And possibly with Red Skull's German supersoldier project as well.  
  
Rhodey pulled a face. "That doesn't surprise me in the slightest."  
  
Tony looked up. "I heard that Norman Osborn put in a good word for him with the hiring committee." He didn't give the words any particular inflection, as if summoning up emotion about the whole thing were beyond him at this point. Using tiny tweezers, he carefully removed another infinitesimal piece of glass from the bottom of the half-dismantled boot, setting it down amid the pile of glass pieces he was creating on top of one of Jan's fashion magazines.  
  
If Jan wasn't done with that, she was going to be less than pleased. Steve checked the title absently, and reconsidered; no, it was Vogue. She only read that in order to mock other designers' haute couture clothing anyway.  
  
"It's not about making superpowered soldiers," Rhodey was saying. He was leaning forward now, elbows on his knees, intent. "It's about making sure these kids have some idea of what the hell they're doing. I was an adult when I got into this game, ex-military, a trained pilot, and it was still more than I could handle. I was just lucky there weren't any serious consequences. A lot of us haven't been that lucky."  
  
Tony gave a little half-smile. "That's my fault," he said wryly. "I tossed you into the deep end of the pool without bothering to tell you how to swim."  
  
"Yeah," Rhodey snorted. "Because you were really in a state to give me instructions." He turned back to Steve. "It's not a choice for these kids; their powers aren't some experiment they volunteered for, or a suit of armor that they can take off if they can't handle it. If no one takes responsibility for training them, they're going to get hurt, and they're going to hurt other people."  
  
That was actually a very good point. Steve had certainly seen the damage out-of-control superpowers could cause.  
  
Wanda, Carol, Firestar, Jack of Hearts; all of them had struggled with their powers. Jack had had to spend hours locked in a zero chamber just to keep his powers far enough under control to avoid exploding. And then, of course, there was the Hulk.  
  
Steve had chosen to be given the supersoldier serum, just as Tony had chosen to put on the armor, but not everyone got to choose. Some of the Avengers had been born with superpowers, and others had acquired them by accident, like Carol and Peter. Luke Cage had technically volunteered for the experiment that had given him unbreakable skin, but considering the circumstances, he really hadn't had the option of saying no. Sam hadn't chosen his powers, either.  
  
They had all been adults, and most of them had had teammates to try and help them deal with it. All except Peter, who had handled being a fifteen-year-old solo hero far better than anyone ought to have expected him to.  
  
"You know, Peter really would be good at that," Steve said, after a long moment. "But you'll never get him to leave New York City, anymore than you'd get Daredevil to." Not that they would want to; both the remnants of the Initiative and New York law enforcement were pretending very hard that Daredevil didn't exist these days. The unqualified disaster that their attempt to prove Matt Murdock was Daredevil had turned into wasn't something anyone was likely to forget anytime soon.  
  
"So," Tony said conversationally, "how long were you standing there listening to us?"  
  
"You know who else would be good at it?" Steve said, ignoring the question but feeling his ears go hot. "Delroy Garrett." Triathlon was another hero who'd had problems with his powers, although the circumstances had been a little more esoteric than simple lack of control, and he was also deeply committed both to superheroing and to the ideas of training, discipline, and self-improvement.  
  
"He's already signed on with the Initiative," Tony said, a tiny line appearing between his eyebrows as he considered the idea. "And when he's not convinced that you're insulting the cult he belongs to, he's good with people."  
  
"He doesn't belong to a cult anymore," Steve pointed out, in the interest of fairness. "The Triune Understanding hasn't existed in years, and Delroy's part of the reason why." He'd been deeply angry when he had learned that the religion whose tenets he'd believed in so strongly had been a front for a crazy megalomaniac's attempt to build himself a power base.  
  
"I know, I know," Tony said, waving the little metal tweezers dismissively. "You're right; he'd be good at training people. Plus, he believes in being a part of something, like you two."  
  
"The military is not a cult, Tony."  
  
"This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine-"  
  
"That's the marines," Rhodey interrupted. "They are a cult. Anyway, you're one to talk, mister I-sleep-in-my-armor."  
  
Steve could have pointed out that the Marine Corps emphasis on esprit de corps and unit cohesion had a practical purpose, but as a former Air Force officer, Rhodey knew that perfectly well. This kind of teasing byplay with Tony was obviously something just as familiar to Rhodey as it was to him. Which made sense, he supposed. Tony did the same thing with Pepper, and with most of the other long-time Avengers.  
  
"I've never really worked with Triathlon," Rhodey said, returning to the topic at hand. "I hear he's done a good job as a team leader for the Initiative, though." He frowned faintly, expression speculative. "I wonder if I can get him reassigned."  
  
"I've cleaned all the glass out of you," Tony said, addressing the metal boot in his hands. "Why are you still not working? What else is wrong with you?"  
  
Steve had always enjoyed watching Tony work; how intensely focused he got, how dexterous those long, callused fingers were... and the fact that Tony occasionally started talking to his lab equipment or to half-assembled pieces of machinery never failed to amuse him.  
  
"Do you want us to leave you and my armor alone together?" Rhodey asked, raising his eyebrows.  
  
"What?" Tony looked up, blinking. It wasn't an act - Steve was pretty sure he honestly had no idea what the two of them had just been talking about. "You know, I think I could get you a ten percent increase in thrust from these, if I just recalibrate a few things and add a few minor modifications."  
  
The smear of soot made a dark streak across one prominent cheekbone. Yesterday, his eyes had been smudged with dark circles, looking almost bruised, but now only faint traces of them remained. He could easily have just emerged from a night spent in the lab, where he been too absorbed in some project or other to sleep.  
  
Steve leaned down and curved one hand around the side of Tony's face, using his thumb to brush away the soot. Tony's eyes fluttered to half-mast, and he leaned into Steve's hand for a moment before Steve let go and drew his hand away.  
  
The cat returned once more, Clint's arrow fletching firmly grasped in its mouth, and spat the feathers out onto Rhodey's foot. When he didn't immediately reach down to pick them up, the cat raised itself onto its haunches, placed both front paws on Rhodey's knee, and mewled demandingly.  
  
"I can come back for my armor later," Rhodey said, regarding Steve and Tony with a blank poker face that would have done Nick Fury proud. "Sorry, cat," he added, pushing the kitten's paws off his knee. "You'll have to find someone else to play with." He scooped the feathers up for what was presumably the last time and threw them, to the cat's violent delight. It leapt into the air as the feathers drifted away, snatching at them with both paws.  
  
"I should have it all back together in a couple of hours," Tony said. "I've got everything I need to upgrade the bootjets in my lab."  
  
Steve gave Tony a look, which Tony didn't appear to notice. By this point, he'd probably forgotten that his lab was supposed to be off limits for the day. "Have fun," Steve sighed, giving up. He turned to Rhodey. "I'll walk you out."  
  
The central hallway of the Avengers' living quarters had once had a painting of the original five Avengers hanging in it, but it had disappeared to the same place that all of the rest of the artwork in Stark Tower seemed to have gone to. The hallway was left looking barren, more sterile even than a hotel, which would at least have had an ugly pastel print.  
  
Rhodey didn't comment on the stripped-down decor. Either he was doing the same thing everyone else seemed to be doing and ignoring it, or he simply didn't know that anything was missing; Steve wasn't sure if he'd been in Stark Tower prior to the Registration mess.  
  
Whatever problem might have once existed between Rhodey and Tony, they had obviously dealt with it. Even the awkwardness that Steve was thought he'd picked up on after Tony had told Rhodey that he liked men seemed to have dissipated.  
  
Which was all to the good, considering that Rhodey was one of the few people Tony had left outside of the Avengers at this point; he'd never had that large a support network to begin with, and now Happy Hogan was gone and things were apparently awkward with Pepper as a result, which wasn't surprising, but was unfortunate. It also meant that, old disagreements or no, Rhodey had a power to hurt Tony that few people possessed these days.  
  
And even if it was unintentional, Tony was unlikely to defend himself. For one thing, he'd had feelings for Rhodey once, and Tony's willingness to take anything dealt out by someone he was in a relationship with was something that had periodically worried Steve, and worried him even more so now that Steve was in a relationship with him.  
  
Steve hesistated, steps slowing, trying to think of the proper way to explain this to Rhodey, when Rhodey spoke.  
  
"My armor's got four times the firepower of Tony's," he said, in a conversational tone. "If you hurt him, you'll get to experience it firsthand."  
  
Steve stopped dead and stared at Rhodey, completely nonplussed. "If I..." he started.  
  
"I'm not saying you would," Rhodey went on, "but Tony's got a pretty lousy track record where women are concerned. He lets half the women he sleeps with walk all over him, and I don't you think you being a guy is gonna make any difference there."  
  
"This is the second time I've had this conversation this week," Steve found himself saying, more plaintively than he would have liked to. "Why would anyone think that I would hurt Tony, or that I'm not serious about him or that I don't have enough experience to keep him satisfied?" He could feel his ears turning red, remembering Pepper's comment about that.  
  
Rhodey made a face. "I'm not touching that one." He shook his head slightly, and added, "Pepper got to you first, huh?"  
  
"Pepper got to me first," Steve confirmed. "Trust me, the threats aren't necesary." Watching the way Tony had been hurting while under the toxin's influence had been agony. And watching and being unable to help had been nearly unbearable. There had been far too many times in the past where Tony had been hurt and Steve had found himself unable to do anything, but this time had been one of the worst, because he had so much more to lose now. "The other day, I-" He broke off, not knowing how to continue or even if he wanted to.  
  
Rhodey nodded slowly, and smiled a little. "I know what you mean." He snorted, adding, "Thank god there's only one of him. I don't think I could take it if I had to worry about more high maintenance, self-destructive people."  
  
"On that note," Steve said, "good luck dealing with your superpowered teenagers."  
  
"Oh, thanks a lot." Rhodey sighed. "You're sure Spiderman wouldn't be willing to help?"  
  
"You could ask him," Steve said, "but I doubt you'll have much luck."  
  
Rhodey shrugged, and then grinned. "Well, this trip wasn't a total loss. At least I'm getting new jet boots out of it."  
  
There were times that Steve wondered exactly why Tony and Rhodey were friends, and then there were the times, like now, when he was reminded that they shared a deep and abiding love for things that went very fast, exploded, or both.  
  
  


***

  
  
  
The man behind the bakery counter finished ringing up her purchase and wished her a good afternoon, while she stood frozen, still clutching the loaf of bread she had just bought.  
  
The name he had called her was not hers, and, she realized abruptly, she had no idea who he was.  
  
In fact, Wanda realized slowly, as she wandered out of the bakery and into the narrow, cobblestone street, she had no idea who any of the people here were, people who kept smiling and nodding at her as if they knew her. She didn't even know where here was, though the old-world look of the town, with its wood and plaster buildings and gable windows suggested Europe.  
  
Why would she expect anything else? She had never lived anywhere else. She had learned English from her Aunt, out of textbooks, and through practicing on tourists, so why did it seem strange that she and the Baker had been speaking in Rumanian?  
  
She was thinking in English, she realized, and had been at least since that moment in the bakery, despite the fact that Rumanian was her native tongue, the language she'd spoken her whole life.  
  
Had she really learned English at her Aunt's kitchen table? How long had she been able to think in it? Everything prior to the last few minutes was distant, almost unreal.  
  
She'd lived in this small village, at the foot of Mount Wundgadore, for her whole life. But how could she have? It didn't make sense; she didn't know any of these people, didn't even remember the names of the streets.  
  
Her feet kept moving automatically, without any conscious input from her.  
  
As she walked slowly along the narrow streets, mostly empty under the early afternoon sun, she tried desperately to put a name to any of the handful of people she passed, to remember who lived in even one of the houses, remember if she'd ever eaten at that little cafe, bought anything at that shop... she couldn't.  
  
The last clear thing she remembered was the time a month or so back when a blond tourist had rescued her, and she had kissed him and taken him home for the night. Clint. His name had been Clint. It was, Wanda realized, the only name other than her own that she knew.  
  
Why had she slept with him? She had liked him, yes, maybe even been drawn to him; he had been very friendly, and certainly not unattractive. But somehow she didn't think of herself as the kind of person who had sex with strange men just to be friendly. She hadn't done it before, had she?  
  
Was that why the baker had smiled at her? Why so many of the men she passed on the street nodded at her? Wanda hugged the loaf of bread against her chest and walked faster.  
  
She kept walking until she had left town far behind, following a small, winding path right to the foot of the mountain, just where the landscape started to slope upward. Why on earth had she decided to live so far out of town? She ought to at least have a bicycle or something -- surely she didn't walk the whole mile and half every time she needed groceries.  
  
The house at the end of the path didn't look any more familiar than the ones in town had, but Wanda found herself walking up to the door and lifting the latch. The door proved to be unlocked, swinging open easily at her touch.  
  
The cottage was drab inside, bland cream walls undecorated. Somehow, it didn't look like the kind of place she would live in; there ought to have been... more color?  
  
Wanda closed the heavy, wooden door behind her, and carefully set the loaf of bread down on the kitchen table, shoulders suddenly stiff. There was someone else in the house; she could feel it.  
  
"Hello?" She turned in a slow circle, hands coming up, ready to defend herself. "Is anyone there?"  
  
Only silence answered her.  
  
Every nerve on edge, Wanda made a careful circuit of the house, finding no one. Everything was very clean and neat, almost sterile. She had no books, no photographs, not even so much as a vase of flowers. The house was like a cottage in a children’s picture book; one that was still waiting for someone to actually live there.  
  
As she went from room to empty room, the conviction that she was not alone only grew. "This isn't right," she whispered to herself in growing frustration. "I shouldn't be here."  
  
"You belong here." The whispery voice echoed through the house, faint, but seeming to come from everywhere at once.   
  
She knew that voice. It was her aunt's voice. Aunt Agatha was dead...  
  
"This is where you have always belonged," her aunt's voice went on, gentle but commanding. "Here. With me."  
  
Wanda froze; everything in her wanted to turn and run, but her body wasn't listening, and she knew, suddenly, that this, this  _thing_ , whatever it was, was not only not her aunt, but evil. Evil and unimaginably ancient.  
  
The blond American hadn't been the only person who'd come here to see her. As the thing-that-was-not-her-aunt spoke, a hazy memory tugged at the corner of her mind. There had been another visitor, a beast-man with blue fur, who had accused her her of doing something terrible, and had begged for her help. She had laughed at him. She didn't know why; she had listened to him plead, and opened her mouth to apologize, to tell him she was sorry, but she had no idea what he was talking about, but instead she had mocked him, and sent him away. She hadn't known him either, but she had the nagging feeling that she should have, and that she knew the blond American from somewhere else, too.  
  
Who was she really? What had she done?  
  
Whatever it was, the thing speaking to her in her dead aunt's voice was involved. Wanda tried again to run, to get as far away from this place as possible, but her body was paralyzed. How long had she been here, in this empty fairy tale cottage with no art on the walls? What had it done to her?   
  
"Now be a good girl," the-thing-that-was-not-her-aunt told her, "and lock the door."  
  
And she did. She wasn't sure if she was locking someone else out, or herself in.  
  
  


***

  
  
  
Steve arched his body backwards and watched Tony's fist go sailing over his head. Tony had put his entire weight into the punch, which meant that he was already off balance when Steve straightened up, sidestepped Tony's attempt to rush him, and pivoted on one foot, launching a kick at Tony's head. Tony managed to block the blow with one arm, but just barely.  
  
Steve had missed sparring like this. The two of them had practiced together on and off for over seven years now, ever since Tony had first come to him and asked for lessons on how to defend himself, since his "bodyguard" had been framed for murder and Tony had handed the armor over to SHIELD. If Steve hadn't already been almost certain that Tony himself was Iron Man before that first lesson, he'd known it without a doubt by the time it was over.  
  
Tony had done all of his fighting in the armor before that point, and he had repeatedly left himself wide open, more so than his relative lack of experience in hand-to-hand combat could have accounted for; he'd been so used to depending on the armor's ability to absorb damage that he often hadn't bothered to dodge or block Steve's blows.  
  
At least, that was what Steve had concluded at the time. Now, with a little more perspective on where Tony's head had been back then, he wondered if there might not have been more to it than that.  
  
Tony was wearing sweatpants and a white undershirt that had a long smear of black motor oil across the front, right over his heart. The dark circles the toxin had left under his eyes were gone, his hair was matted to his head with sweat, and he was grinning at Steve. It was an expression Steve didn't see nearly enough of these days -- one he'd never seen as often as he would have liked.  
  
"Okay, Captain America," he said, "now you're just showing off."  
  
Steve was grinning back now. "Oh, that wasn't showing off," he said, and threw himself into a back handspring to dodge Tony's next blow. "That was," he finished, now on the opposite side of the room. "We should do this more often," he added, as he braced himself for Tony's next attack. "I've missed this."  
  
"What would I do without my regular collection of bruises from being thrown into the mat?" Still grinning, Tony came at Steve, who sidestepped him easily. He blocked all but one of the flurry of blows Steve aimed at him, even managing to land one of his own in return.  
  
"I'll have to start being more careful," Steve said, swaying sideways to let Tony's fist slide past his head. "Pepper and Rhodey have both threatened me with maiming if I ever hurt you."  
  
Tony faltered for a moment, completely missing the opening Steve had deliberately left in his defenses in order to lure him into an attack and get him off balance again. "You would never hurt me," he protested.  
  
"Everybody makes mistakes, Tony."  
  
Tony sidestepped another kick, circling slowly around Steve. He was going to try and come at him from the side, Steve judged. "I guess I ought to be flattered that they think my honor's still worth defending." He shrugged one shoulder, and rubbed the back of one hand across his forehead, wiping away beads of sweat. "I shouldn't be surprised. Our first night back here after the hearing, I found a note on my pillow saying, 'I know where you sleep. James. P.S. Say hi to Steve and ask him why he has so many pansy-ass sweaters.'"  
  
"Bucky did not say that." Steve moved with Tony, keeping the other man within his line-of-sight. He didn't doubt that Bucky was capable of sneaking into the top floor floor of the heavily secured Stark Tower and leaving Tony a threatening note, but the bit about the sweaters had to be Tony editorializing. "And you're one to talk." Tony's most hideous sweater, a shapeless, colorless mass of grey wool, had been destroyed along with one of SHIELD's flying cars in the final battle against Red Skull, but he still possessed an equally shapeless deep orange sweater.  
  
"Steve, it took me half an hour to find the bug your ex-sidekick left in our closet. It was  _inside_  one of your sweaters."  
  
"You searched the rest of the room, too, right?" Steve asked, the thought of Bucky overhearing some of the things he'd spent the past few weeks doing with Tony throwing him off just enough that one of Tony's blows slipped past his guard, catching him on the shoulder.  
  
"Do you think I'd have sex with you in that room if I knew the Winter Soldier, and probably Nick Fury, were watching?"  
  
"Yes," Steve answered, without hesitation, and threw a punch at Tony.  
  
Tony smirked, dodging back out of range, the blow missing him by less than an inch. "And it never occurred to you and Sharon that the backseats of those flying cars are monitored?"  
  
Actually, it hadn't. And he preferred not to think about the fact that, as a high ranking SHIELD agent, Sharon had to have known. "Most of the time I have a longer reach than whomever I'm fighting," Steve observed, as he and Tony circled one another again. "I haven't got that advantage with you."  
  
"No," Tony said, breathing hard, the exertion obviously starting to tell on him. "Just forty pounds of extra mass. Physics, remember?"  
  
Steve himself was nowhere near winded yet, but he had broken a sweat. He really had missed this.  
  
Hand-to-hand practice with other people -- Sam, Clint, Sharon -- was always either simply practice, and a chance to improve one another's technique, or a competition. It was those things with Tony, too, but somehow it had always felt like a game; he could relax, have fun, even show off a little if he felt like it. It was only recently that he had realized that it had also been a form of flirting.  
  
In their last few sparring matches, Tony had been hesitating, not taking the openings Steve had deliberately left him, not hitting with his full weight into the punches he threw. They'd only had the chance to work out together a few times since Tony's ribs and shoulder had healed, but Tony had hesitated every time, so Steve could tell it was a pattern. He wasn't sure Tony had even been aware of it, but Steve knew Tony's fighting abilities as well as he knew his own -- which wasn't surprising considering that he'd taught him -- and he could tell.  
  
This time, Tony wasn't hesitating, and Steve allowed himself to hope that all of the misery of the past year was finally behind them. Not just Registration, but everything. The destruction of the mansion, which had been both his and Tony's home; the team breaking apart; losing Thor and Clint and Vision and Scott and Jack; losing Wanda in a different way; learning just how thoroughly he had failed to protect Bucky; Tony being used like a puppet, until he was forced to stop his own heart to put an end to it; Stamford, and the American people turning on them, and all of them turning on each other... His own death, and what it had done to Tony.  
  
Some of the things they had lost could never be recovered, but Steve had never dared to hope that they would be able to salvage this much, to build something new out of the ashes. He'd certainly never expected anything as miraculous as Clint's return, or Thor's -- even though he might still be avoiding them, just knowing that he was alive was like having a weight that Steve hadn't even known was there lifted off his shoulders.  
  
He had never even imagined what he had with Tony, had thought, in his very darkest moments, that their friendship had been replaced by contempt and betrayal, but now he couldn't imagine not having it. The fact that Tony could now spar with him without being half-paralyzed by his own guilt over what had happened meant, hopefully, that Tony was now able to put everything behind him as well. Which meant that they could both move on.  
  
Tony launched a kick of his own at Steve's side, and Steve twisted out of the way and tackled Tony -- who was off balance again -- to the mat.  
  
"That was better," Steve said, grinning at Tony, who was now flat on his back on the mat with Steve straddling him, using his ‘extra mass’ to pin him in place. "You're actually trying this time, but I still took you down pretty quickly. Come on, rich boy," he added, smirking down at Tony, "give me a real challenge."  
  
Tony smirked back, looking surprisingly triumphant for a man who was currently pinned to the floor. "Why? I've got you right where I want you." And then his hips writhed in a way that made Steve lose all interest in sparring.  
  
Apparently, sparring was now also foreplay.  
  
"Um," said Steve, suddenly suspecting that he had, in fact, been outmaneuvered. He couldn't bring himself to mind.  
  
  


***

  
  
  
The entrance to Stark Tower was designed to be imposing; the double doors were close to eight feet high, with a grill of decorative metalwork covering them. Beyond them, through the gaps in the ironwork, the three-story-high, marble-floored lobby was visible, the wide expanse dotted with men and women in what were probably very expensive suits.  
  
Don was not impressed. When one had been to Asgard, very little was truly impressive.  
  
He hadn't intended to come here. He hadn't intended to be in New York at all, but the ravens had brought Thor word of a tall, black-haired woman who had appeared in a burst of light in midtown Manhattan. The ravens declined to speak to him the majority of the time, and their counsel was not to be trusted, but the possibility that Sif was in New York was not one he could afford to overlook.  
  
And, unfortunately, where Thor went, Don Blake went also.  
  
 _"There is merit in Hawkeye's words." Thor's voice rumbled in the back of his mind. Don chose to ignore the faint scolding undertone. "I have thought much on them. The Avengers have been my comrades in arms for many years. My solitude has weighed heavily on me in Asgard,"_  he went on, musingly.  
  
"What solitude?" Don muttered. "There are three hundred Asgardians there now, and they're all huge. And loud." He knew what Thor meant, though, much though he didn't like admitting it. Neither of them were lonely for company; it was a different kind of loneliness. He missed having people to talk to who understood, whom he didn't have to pretend around.  
  
None of the people in Oklahoma knew about Don Blake's connection with Thor, and none of the other Asgardians had ever really understood Thor's attachment to humans, even now, after spending time among them.  
  
 _"If Captain America has forgiven Iron Man and Yellowjacket, he must have a reason, and I would hear that reason."_  
  
"It had better be a good one." He could feel Thor's agreement. Clint had said that "evil government people" were involved, but Tony and the others should have been able to stand up to them; they were Avengers.  
  
Avengers were supposed to be the good guys, and he had trusted them. Don wasn't the one who had been cloned, whose DNA had been experimented with and used to create monsters, but the betrayal was no less personal for that.  
  
"So," Don said, after a long moment of silence, "which one of us is going to do this?"  
  
His only answer was silence; Thor was leaving it up to him.  
  
Don hesitated, then slammed the end of his walking stick against the ground.


End file.
